tgtaus   J&'prcckelg  Wunii 


^^^^^^^ 


onservation  of  Men 


By 

RALPH  C.  RICHARDS 


K^i^^tesk:^^^^Js^^^rsa^^^ 


niDersit^  of  d^ 
4  4 (California  * 


1 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/conservationofmeOOrichrich 


Conservation  of  Men 


ADDRESS 

To  The  Operating  Men  Of  The  Chicago  &  North 

Western  Railway  On  The  Prevention 

Of  Accidents 


BY 

RALPH  C.  RICHARDS 


.  . .  • . » 

J  •  «\ »  »  • 


,•.••••.•»  t 


1910 


Copyright  iqio 
By  Ralph  C.  Richards 


Remember,  It  Is  Better  to  Cause  a 
Delay  Than  to  Cause  an  Accident 


224529 


JnabiDoA  as  38ubD  oJ  nsHT  xbI^Q 


esctss 


CONSERVATION  OF  MEN 

We  who  are  here  today  are  a  small  part  of  the 
great  army  of  men  working  for  the  North  Western 
Railroad.  We  forty-thousand  men  working  for  the 
North  Western  are  a  small  part  of  the  great  army 
of  men  who  are  working  on  all  the  railroads  of 
the  United  States.  The  North  Western  Railroad 
like  almost  all  great  enterprises,  started  in  a  small 
way,  with  a  handful  of  men  and  about  one  hun- 
dred and  ninety  miles  of  track.  That  was  fifty- 
one  years  ago.  Today  we  have  forty  or  fifty-thou- 
sand men,  eight  thousand  miles  of  track,  fifteen 
hundred  engines  and  I  will  not  attempt  to  say  how 
many  thousand  cars.  The  business  of  the  company 
has  increased  every  year  with  a  few  exceptions  dur- 
ing this  fifty  years,  the  force  of  men  employed  has 
increased  nearly  every  year,  but  the  thing  that  has 
increased  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  business  and 
to  the  number  of  men  employed,  are  the  accidents 
and  the  personal  injuries.  This  is  not  only  true  of 
our  road  which  we  claim  to  be  the  best  road,  where 
we  claim  to  have  the  best  men,  but  it  is  true  of  all 
the  other  railroads  in  the  country. 

Now,  it  is  because  of  this  enormous  increase  in 
the  loss  of  life  occasioned  by  these  railroad  acci- 
dents, because  of  the  enormous  increase  in  personal 
injuries  which  do  not  result  in  death,  because  every 
fifty  minutes  there  is  some  man  killed  on  the  rail- 
roads in  the  United  States,  and  thirty  per  cent  of 

7 


them  are  you  men, 'and  while  I  am  talking  here  to- 
day there  may  be  a  man  killed  on  our  road ;  because 
every  five  minutes  there  is  some  one  injured  on  the 
railroads  in  the  United  States,  and  eighty  per  cent 
of  them  are  you  people ;  because  every  fifty  minutes 
some  one  is  injured  on  the  North  Western  Rail- 
road and  eighty  per  cent  of  them  are  you  people; 
because  every  twenty-four  hours  in  every  day  of 
the  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  of  the  past 
year,  except  twelve,  some  one  was  killed  on  the 
North  Western  Railroad;  because  during  the  last 
twelve  months  the  number  of  fatalities  to  employes, 
not  passengers,  not  outsiders,  but  employes,  in- 
creased thirty-five  per  cent ;  because  the  number  of 
personal  injuries  which  did  not  Result  fatally  in- 
creased tweny-eight  per  cent  last  year  over  the  year 
before;  because  we  people  on  the  North  Western 
Railroad,  during  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years  have 
been  going  around  patting  ourselves  on  the  back 
and  saying  we  were  the  whole  show  and  that  we 
could  transact  our  business  better  and  safer  than 
anybody  else,  whereas  we  were  going  down  to  the 
foot  of  the  column.  Because  of  all  these  things  the 
management  of  the  company  have  asked  me  to  come 
here  and  tell  you  about  it,  to  tell  you  this  story 
which  is  being  acted  every  day. 

Think  of  it !  Every  third  day  some  employe  is 
killed  on  the  North  Western  Railroad,  and  every 
fifty  minutes  one  of  you  men  are  injured,  not  pass- 
engers, not  outsiders,  but  you  employes.  Now  isn't 
it  high  time  that  you  men  who  are  paying  this  awful 
toll,  remember  it  isn't  the  company,  it  isn't  the 
officers,  it  isn't  the  passengers  or  the  people  who 


are  crossing  our  tracks  that  are  paying  this  toll,  it 
is  you  people,  you  employes  of  the  road.  It  is  not  a 
question  of  dollars  and  cents,  it  is  just  a  question 
of  saving  human  life,  the  most  valuable  thing  in  the 
world,  and  when  once  it  is  gone  can  never  be 
brought  back.  It  is  trying  to  save  men  from  losing 
their  legs  or  their  arms  that  can  never  be  put  back, 
trying  to  save  making  widows  and  orphans,  trying 
to  save  destitution  and  misery.  The  officers  can't 
do  this,  the  laws  can  not  do  it,  there  is  no  one  to 
do  it  but  just  you,  and  if  you  will,  you  can  do  it  by 
turning  over  your  hand. 

To  me  these  awful  figures  of  death  and  calamity 
put  together  are  appalling.  Even  I,  who  have  been 
in  this  business  all  my  life,  didn't  realize  how  bad 
it  was,  and  all  of  these  bad  things  come  to  me  you 
know,  and  have  been  coming  to  me  for  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century. 

The  figures  are  made  up  by  the  Interstate  Com- 
merce Commission  down  in  Washington  from  re- 
ports given  them  by  every  railroad  in  the  country. 
We  are  required  by  law  to  report  all  personal  inju- 
ries, and  all  accidents,  and  you  can  depend  upon 
it  that  no  personal  injuries  or  accidents  are  reported 
to  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  that  do  not 
occur.  None  of  us  care  to  make  our  record  worse 
than  it  is,  and  God  knows  it  is  bad  enough. 

Now  in  regard  to  these  figures.  I  wish  I  could 
carry  them  in  my  head  because  I  hate  to  read  any- 
thing, but  these  figures  are  so  appalling  that  I  want 
to  be  accurate,  and  so  I  am  going  to  read  them 
to  you.  During  the  ten  years  that  the  railroads 
have  been  making  these  reports  to  the  Interstate 


Commerce  Commission,  there  were  eight  hundred 
and  sixty-eight  thousand  and  three  people,  not  eight 
thousand,  not  eighty-six  thousand,  but  eight  hun- 
dred and  sixty-eight  thousand  and  three  people 
killed  and  injured  in  the  United  States  during  this 
time  when  we  have  the  sign  of  "safety"  over  our 
door.  Of  this  number,  during  the  ten  year  period, 
there  were  ninety-four  thousand,  three  hundred  and 
ninety  killed;  more  men  than  were  killed  on  our 
side  in  all  of  the  battles  of  that  terrible  war  thirty- 
five  or  forty  years  ago  between  the  north  and 
the  south,  more  than  were  killed  in  the  war  when 
we  went  out  to  kill  each  other.  During  ten  years, 
in  the  pursuit  of  a  peaceful  industry  we  have  killed 
more  people  than  were  killed  in  a  five-years'  war, 
and  thirty-two  thousand  nine  hundred  and  thirty- 
six  of  them,  not  hundreds,  but  thousands,  were  you 
people,  were  railroad  employes  like  you  and  I. 

There  were  seven  hundred  and  seventy-seven 
thousand,  six  hundred  and  thirteen  people  injured 
in  the  ten  years  and  six  hundred  and  eight  thou- 
sand three  hundred  and  twenty-five  were  railroad 
men ;  they  were  not  passengers,  they  were  not  peo- 
ple trespassing  on  the  tracks,  they  were  not  people 
crossing  the  tracks,  but  just  you  people.  During 
this  period  the  North  Western  Railroad  which  we 
claim  is  the  best  road  and  has  the  best  men,  has 
done  its  share  of  the  havoc.  In  ten  years  we 
killed  twenty-six  hundred  and  fifty-five  people, 
equal  to  three  regiments  of  soldiers,  and  seven  hun- 
dred and  thirty-five  of  them  were  you  people,  were 
your  brothers,  your  sons  and  your  fathers,  your 
next-door  neighbors.    In  ten  years  we  North  West- 

10 


ern  people  have  managed  to  have  seven  hundred 
and  thirty-five  funerals  of  employes ;  seven  hundred 
and  thirty-five  times  we  have  had  to  call  on  the 
priest  or  the  minister,  and  seven  hundred  and  thirty- 
five  times  in  ten  years  some  of  us  have  had  to  go  to 
these  awful  funerals.  Every  one  here  has  had  to 
go  to  these  houses  darkened  by  mourning,  we  send 
flowers  or  messages  of  sympathy,  we  try  to  say 
something,  but  we  don't  know  what  to  say  to  these 
widows  and  mothers  and  fathers  who  have  lost 
husbands  and  sons.  Seven  hundred  and  thirty-five 
times  in  ten  years  we  men  on  the  North  Western 
Railroad  have  had  this  to  do. 

During  the  same  ten  years  we  managed  to  injure 
fifty-two  thousand,  not  fifty-two  hundred  but  fifty- 
two  thousand,  three  hundred  and  five  employes, — 
your  friends,  your  families,  your  relatives,  and  some 
of  them  have  died.  We  do  not  report  a  case  as  a 
fatality  unless  a  man  dies  within  twenty-four  hours 
after  the  accident  occurs,  and  we  do  not  count  an 
injury  unless  a  man  is  disabled  for  at  least  a  day. 
The  injuries  reported  to  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  are  confined  to  those  in  which  the 
disability  is  over  three  days.  The  average  length 
of  disability  to  men  on  the  North  Western  is 
about  two  weeks.  Suppose  it  is  only  ten  days 
then  we  have  five  hundred  and  twenty-three 
thousand  men  disabled  one  day  in  ten  years. 
What  do  you  think  would  happen  to  the  State 
of  Michigan  if  on  any  one  day  every  man, 
and  that  would  cover  every  man  in  the  State, 
should  be  disabled?  How  long  do  you  suppose  it 
would  take  to  get  over  such  a  calamity,  to  get 

11 


things  in  shape  again?  Why!  It  would  take 
months  and  perhaps  years  to  recover  from  it.  Do 
you  know  that  every  time  we  have  one  of  these 
accidents  it  resuhs  in  an  increased  risk  to  the  rest 
of  you  because  some  new  man  who  may  be  incom- 
petent, or  careless,  he  will  certainly  be  inexperi- 
enced, has  to  take  the  place  of  the  man  who  has 
been  injured,  or  the  place  of  the  man  who  has  been 
killed?  We  know  what  the  result  will  be,  and  we 
also  know  that  not  only  does  the  risk  increase  to 
the  other  men  left  in  the  service  but  that  the  effic- 
iency of  the  organization  decreases.  For  example : 
Take  from  the  service  for  ten  days  the  Foreman 
at  the  round  house,  the  Train  Master,  the  Superin- 
tendent, the  Section  Foreman,  the  Road  Master,  the 
Brakeman  or  Conductor  or  the  Engineer  and  Fire- 
man on  some  special  job  or  some  special  train,  and 
put  a  green  man  in  their  place,  we  all  know  that 
unless  we  happen  to  get  some  extraordinarily  ex- 
perienced, competent  man,  that  it  will  increase  the 
risk  to  the  men  left  on  the  trains,  to  everybody  in 
the  shops  or  the  round  houses  or  on  the  tracks,  and 
at  the  same  time  we  are  decreasing  the  efficiency 
of  the  organization,  which  goes  down  accordingly. 

The  last  report  made  by  the  Interstate  Com- 
merce Commission  was  for  the  year  ending  June 
30,  1908.  The  record  of  calamities  on  the  railroads 
of  the  United  States  for  that  year  was  very  much 
worse  than  for  an  average  time  during  the  ten 
years  the  records  of  which  I  have  given. 

Now,  I  haven't  come  here  for  the  purpose  of 
finding  fault,  I  haven't  come  here  for  the  purpose 
of  criticising  anyone,  because  in  all  probability  I 

12 


might  not  have  done  as  well  in  your  places  as  you 
men  have  done.  I  have  just  come  here  to  tell  you 
the  story,  and  then  it  is  up  to  you  to  say  whether 
it  cannot  be  changed.  If  you  want  to  change  con- 
ditions, you  can  do  so  tomorrow;  if  you  don't 
want  to  change,  it  never  will  be  done,  because  you 
people  and  no  one  else  can  do  it. 

I  read  in  the  paper  the  other  day  that  they  are 
to  have  a  great  meeting  up  in  St.  Paul  to  discuss 
the  conservation  of  forests,  the  conservation  of 
water  power,  the  conservation  of  untilled  land,  and 
that  the  greatest  citizen  in  the  world,  we  all  know 
who  he  is,  is  going  to  be  there  to  address  them. 
Now,  we  ought  to  have  meetings  and  conventions 
on  conservation  of  men  as  well  as  things.  Men, 
who  are  of  so  much  more  importance  than  things. 
There  is  no  comparison  between  a  man  and  an 
engine.  If  an  engine  is  smashed  or  demolished  we 
can  buy  a  new  one.  If  a  man  is  smashed  or  killed 
we  cannot  bring  him  back  to  life.  Should  we  not 
then,  have  some  thought,  some  plan  for  the  con- 
servation of  men?  Take  for  example  a  railroad. 
It  may  be  a  bum  railroad  with  poor  tracks,  poor 
cars  and  poor  engines,  but  if  it  has  good  men  we 
all  know  it  can  get  good  results.  We  can  get  good 
results  and  we  can  handle  the  traffic,  and  gradually 
the  good  men  will  build  up  the  bum  railroad  and 
make  it  a  good  one,  but  take  the  best  railroad  in 
the  world  with  the  best  cars,  the  best  engines  and 
the  best  tracks,  if  it  has  a  poor  lot  of  men  to  run 
it,  in  twelve  months  it  will  have  gone  to  pieces.  I 
say,  therefore,  that  it  is  men,  not  things  that  are 
important  on  a  railroad,  just  as  they  are  of  the 
most  importance  everywhere. 

13 


During-  the  last  year  in  which  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission  made  their  report,  there 
were  killed,  not  injured,  but  killed  on  the  railroads 
of  this  country,  ten  thousand,  three  hundred  and 
thirteen  men,  women  and  children;  that  is  one  for 
every  fifty  minutes  of  every  twenty-four  hours  of 
every  day  in  the  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days 
of  those  twelve  months,  and  of  that  number  thirty- 
four  hundred  and  seventy,  not  three  hundred  and 
seventy,  but  thirty-four  hundred  and  seventy  or  ten 
a  day,  were  you  men:  They  were  your  brothers, 
your  fathers,  your  sons  and  your  next-door  neigh- 
bors who  were  killed. 

In  the  same  year  there  were  a  hundred  and  five 
thousand  two  hundred  and  thirty-four  people  in- 
jured, or  one  for  every  five  minutes  of  every  hour 
of  every  twenty-four  hours  of  every  day  of  the 
three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  of  the  year.  Of 
that  number  eighty-three  thousand  three  hundred 
and  sixty-seven  were  you  people,  you  railroad  men. 
Think  of  it,  eighty  per  cent  of  all  the  people  in- 
jured, were  employes,  not  passengers,  not  outsiders, 
but  just  we  railroad  employes.  What  do  you  think 
of  that  for  a  record  in  a  business  which  advertises 
itself  to  be  safe? 

During  the  last  twelve  months,  not  the  twelve 
months  of  the  report  but  for  the  year  ending  June 
30,  1910,  we  killed  and  injured  on  the  North  West- 
ern Railroad  alone,  ten  thousand  five  hundred  and 
sixteen  people.  Now,  just  think  of  it, — on  this 
railroad  which  advertises  itself  to  be  safe,  which  ad- 
vertises itself  to  be  the  best,  where  the  officers  and 
all  of  you  people  have  been  patting  yourselves  on 

u 


the  back, — think  of  our  killing  and  injuring  ten 
thousand  five  hundred  and  sixteen  men,  women 
and  children  in  twelve  months.  Of  that  num- 
ber one  hundred  and  seven  of  the  killed  were 
employes.  They  were  your  brothers,  your  neigh- 
bors, perhaps  dear  friends  or  maybe  a  brother  of 
the  girl  you  are  going  to  marry,  and  maybe 
some  boy  who  is  the  sole  support  of  a  wid- 
owed mother,  or  some  man  who  is  the  sole 
support  of  a  woman  and  six  or  seven  children, 
and  the  larger  part  of  {hese  accidents  were  brought 
about  by  the  thoughtlessness  or  carelessness  of  some 
man  who  was  not  killed.  We  all  know  that  in  most 
of  our  bad  accidents  the  man  who  gets  killed  or 
badly  injured  is  the  man  who  is  not  to  blame.  Of 
course,  too  often  the  accident  is  brought  about  by 
the  injured  man's  own  carelessness  or  thoughtless- 
ness, too  often  it  is  brought  about  by  the  careless- 
ness of  the  management,  the  officers  of  Divisions, 
and  they  are  just  as  much  to  blame  for  these  con- 
ditions as  you  are.  We  are  all  to  blame  and  we 
have  all  got  to  turn  in  and  change  it. 

During  the  past  year  there  were  thirty-five  per 
cent  more  of  you  killed  than  there  were  the  year 
before.  The  year  before  there  were  seventy-eight 
funerals  on  the  North  Western  Railroad  of  em- 
ployes, and  last  year  we  had  a  hundred  and  seven 
of  those  dreadful  funerals;  some  of  them  were  up 
here.  Of  the  ten  thousand  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
three  people  injured,  eighty-six  hundred  and 
twenty-nine,  not  eight  hundred  and  twenty-nine  but 
eight  thousand  six  hundred  and  twenty-nine,  were 
you  people,  were  you  men  working  on  the  trains, 

15 


you  men  working  in  the  round  houses,  in  the  shops, 
on  the  tracks,  at  the  stations  and  on  the  bridges, — 
eighty-six  hundred  and  twenty-nine  of  them  were 
you  people.  Fortunately  many  of  these  men  were 
not  injured  so  that  they  were  disabled  for  a  long 
period  of  time,  but  very  unfortunately,  some  of 
them  were  disabled  for  life.  Many  of  them  were 
disabled  for  a  day  only,  and  the  average  disa- 
bility was  about  fifteen  days.  Even  with  a  disabil- 
ity of  ten  days  it  means  that  eighty-six  thousand 
and  twenty-nine  people  are  off  the  North  Western 
Railroad  for  one  day. 

Now,  is  it  not  time  we  should  do  something  to 
change  all  this?  Is  it  not  time  that  you  men  who 
are  running  this  railroad, — it  isn*t  the  officers  but 
you  people  who  are  absolutely  operating  the  rail- 
road, you  and  no  one  else  can  change  things  for  the 
better, — isn't  it  time  to  begin?  It  is  not  a  question 
of  passengers,  it  is  not  a  question  of  outsiders,  it  is 
just  a  question  between  we  people  who  have 
grown  up  together  on  the  North  Western  Railroad. 
Many  of  us  have  been  here  all  our  lives,  I  have, 
ever  since  I  was  old  enough  to  work.  I  have 
been  working  for  this  company  ever  since  I  was 
fifteen  years  old,  just  as  many  of  the  rest  of  you 
have  done.  We  laboring  people  are  partly  to  blame 
for  these  accidents.  We  see  these  young  fellows 
come  into  the  work  and  do  things  every  day  that 
we  know  will  sooner  or  later  result  in  some  acci- 
dent, but  because  they  don't  happen  to  be  in  our 
department  or  on  our  train,  and  because  we  don't 
want  to  interfere  with  some  one  else's  business, 
when  it  really  is  our  business  to  do  so,  we  don't 

16 


say  anything,  and  we  let  them  go  on  doing  those 
careless,  reckless  things  until  some  one  is  injured  or 
killed,  perhaps  one  of  us  who  has  seen  these  things 
and  did  not  interfere.  We  men  who  are  working 
for  this  railroad  and  who  have  been  working  for  it 
nearly  all  our  lives  are  partially  to  blame  for  this ; 
we,  with  the  assistance  of  the  younger  men  can 
change  this  if  we  want  it  changed.  We  can  tell 
these  younger  men  what  it  means  when  they  don't 
do  things  right,  and  we  should  always  remember 
that  we  owe  a  duty  to  others  as  well  as  ourselves  in 
this  matter,  to  do  all  in  our  power  to  protect  them 
from  death  and  injury.  In  the  language  of  the 
greatest  man  who  ever  came  to  earth,  "Do  unto 
others  as  we  would  that  they  should  do  unto  us." 
This  is  a  golden  rule  which  has  never  been  im- 
proved upon  and  probably  never  will  be  improved 
upon,  and  if  we  would  only  keep  it  in  mind  when 
we  are  running  a  train,  if  we  all  worked  together 
in  running  the  train  how  much  quicker  and  better 
we  would  get  over  the  road,  than  we  do  when  the 
man  on  the  head  end  gets  a  grouch,  or  the  hind 
end  man  gets  mad,  and  the  engineer  starts  without 
a  signal,  or  goes  ahead  when  he  should  back  up 
and  the  rear  end  throws  the  switch  wrong  or  throws 
them  back  hard  on  the  cars.  How  much  more  often 
we  would  get  to  town  or  to  our  destination  on  time 
if  we  worked  together,  kindly  and  carefully  instead 
of  bucking  each  other.  It  is  just  the  same  way  with 
knocking  the  company ;  we  are  all  working  for  one 
enterprise,  and  sometimes  that  enterprise  gets  into 
trouble.  We  were  in  trouble  last  winter,  serious 
trouble.    How  many  times  did  you  go  down  town 

17 


here,  on  the  street  corners,  in  the  hotels  and  in  the 
boarding  houses  and  cigar  stores,  and  hear  the  men 
talking  about  that  "nutty  superintendent"  and  the 
"fake  train  dispatcher,"  and  "the  old  teapot  of  an 
engine  I  have  to  handle."  Frequently  the  engine 
was  poor,  but  it  didn't  do  you  any  good,  it  didn't 
make  you  feel  any  better  to  knock  the  company  you 
are  working  for,  and  it  doesn't  make  you  feel  any 
better  to  have  someone  else  knock  you  or  the  com- 
pany. Now,  why  not  boost  the  company,  and  why 
not  boost  the  men  who  are  working  with  you  for  the 
company,  and  not  advertise  to  your  friends  and 
neighbors  that  you  are  working  for  a  bum  concern. 
That  is  the  way  we  ought  to  do  business,  not  only 
for  the  company,  but  for  ourselves,  and  that  is  the 
way  we  have  got  to  do  it. 

If  we  are  to  change  this  list  of  calamities,  we 
must  co-operate.  Every  man  must  make  himself  a 
committee  of  safety  to  prevent  some  one  accident. 
If  all  the  men  who  are  here  today  listening  to  me, 
(and  I  appreciate  very  much  the  compliment  of  so 
many  of  you  being  here,)  if  every  one  of  you  men 
would  prevent  one  accident  on  the  Peninsula  Divis- 
ion, we  wouldn't  have  an  accident  for  four  months. 
Think  how  gratifying  it  would  be  to  be  able  to  say 
that  you  had  worked  on  a  division,  and  a  busy  one  as 
this  one  is,  for  four  months  without  an  accident. 
Wouldn'tyourwivesfeelhappierand  safer,  wouldn't 
we  all  feel  safer  and  wouldn't  we  get  better  men 
in  the  service?  You  have  no  idea  how  many  times 
widows  have  told  me  that  they  tried  to  per- 
suade their  husbands,  who  had  been  killed  on 
the   road,   to    leave    the    service   because    it    was 

18 


so  dangerous.  You  have  no  idea  how  many 
times  old,  gray  haired  women  have  come  to  me 
with  tears  in  their  eyes,  to  tell  me  how  they 
tried  to  have  their  boys,  who  are  now  in  their 
graves,  quit  the  service.  Those  are  some  of  the 
things  I  have  to  contend  with.  All  you  men  have 
to  do  is  to  make  a  report  of  the  accident,  but  if 
you  could  hear  these  widows  and  orphans,  fathers 
and  mothers!  Sometimes  the  mother  comes  with 
four  or  five  children,  perhaps  one  of  them  born 
since  the  father's  death.  If  you  could  see  and  hear 
the  things  I  do,  you  would  do  something  and  do  it 
at  once,  to  prevent  these  accidents  from  occuring. 
Moreover,  I  think  you  would  feel  just  as  I  do  about 
it :  that  it  isn't  a  question  of  money,  or  of  property, 
but  one  of  so  much  more  importance  that  we  can't 
talk  about  it  in  the  same  year — it  is  a  question  of 
saving  human  life.  You  people  who  are  here  listen- 
ing to  me  today  can  put  a  stop  to  these  accidents 
on  the  Peninsula  Division  if  you  want  to,  if  you 
make  up  your  minds  to  do  it,  you  can  wipe  it  out, 
put  an  end  to  it  all.  These  accidents  may  be  com- 
pared to  cancers.  You  all  know  how  they  start 
with  a  little  growth  and  how  they  grow  until  we  go 
to  a  surgeon  and  he  takes  off  a  fat  slice  and  gets  a 
fat  fee  for  doing  it.  Pretty  soon  the  cancer  grows 
again  or  shows  up  in  another  place.  Now,  the  thing 
we  should  have  done,  we  should  have  gone  to  the 
right  kind  of  a  surgeon  who  would  have  taken  this 
cancer  out  by  the  roots,  who  would  have  gone  to  the 
very  bottom  and  put  an  end  to  it  without  delay. 
That  is  what  we  must  do  with  this  accident  ques- 
tion ;  we  can't  take  off  a  little  slice  here  and  a  little 

19 


slice  there  and  have  it  amount  to  anything.  We 
must  take  it  out  by  the  roots,  pull  it  out  bag  and 
baggage,  put  a  stop  to  it,  and  you  men  who  are 
here  today  can  do  it  if  you  try. 

Of  course  all  of  these  disasters,  these  accidents, 
injure  the  company,  would  injure  any  company  that 
is  carrying  passengers  and  freight,  and  that  is  the 
purpose  for  which  we  are  organized,  but  the  loss, 
the  pecuniary  loss,  all  comes  out  of  the  public,  we 
will  have  to  charge  the  people  just  so  much  more. 
But  money  doesn't  bring  back  a  man's  life ;  doesn't 
bring  back  his  leg  or  his  arm,  which  I  have  been 
told,  sometimes  continues  to  pain  weeks  after  it  has 
been  taken  away  and  buried.  Is  that  imagination? 
I  don't  know,  I  never  lost  a  leg  or  an  arm,  thank 
God. 

We  see  in  the  papers  and  in  the  magazines  a 
great  deal  of  talk  about  railroad  accidents,  and  from 
it  one  might  think  that  every  man  killed  on  a  rail- 
road was  killed  in  some  train  accident,  some  col- 
lision or  some  derailment.  Now,  we  men  working 
on  the  railroads  all  know  that  isn't  so,  but  that  it  is 
the  little  accidents  which  happen  every  day,  which 
may  be  happening  over  at  the  round  house  this 
very  minute,  or  may  be  happening  at  Ishpeming, 
Green  Bay,  Chicago  or  somewhere  else,  that  makes 
up  this  awful  list,  and  I  want  to  illustrate  this  by 
showing  how  it  was  on  all  the  railroads  in  the 
country. 

In  the  last  report  of  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission,  out  of  the  thirty- four  hundred  and 
seventy  employes  killed  during  that  year,  there  were 
five  hundred  and  fifty-four,  or  less  than  one-sixth 


of  the  number  killed  in  collisions  or  derailments, 
and  twenty-eight  hundred  and  fifty-one  of  that 
thirty-four  hundred  and  seventy  were  killed  in  the 
little  accidents  which  happen  every  day :  little  acci- 
dents which  could  have  been  avoided,  could  have 
been  prevented  in  less  time  than  it  would  take  you 
to  make  a  report  of  the  accident.  You  will  remem- 
ber that  there  was  a  total  of  eighty-three  thousand 
three  hundred  and  sixty-seven  injured  that  year. 
Fifty-five  hundred  and  fifty-one  were  injured  in 
train  accidents,  that  is  collisions  or  derailments,  bad 
enough,  but  there  were  injured  in  these  little  acci- 
dents which  happen  every  day  because  a  shaker 
bar  slips  (and  in  ten  months  we  have  had  eighty- 
two  accidents  from  that  cause).  It  seems  to  me 
that  among  all  the  designers,  builders  and  repairers 
of  locomotive  engines,  there  ought  to  be  somebody 
with  ingenuity  enough  to  get  up  some  apparatus 
for  shaking  grates  which  would  not  result  in  injur- 
ing eight  or  ten  men  per  month  on  one  road,  and  if 
proper  investigation  and  consideration  was  given 
this  matter,  I  believe  such  apparatus  could  easily 
be  devised.  Surely  it  ought  to  be  a  simple  thing 
to  get  up  some  arrangement  by  which  a  shaker 
bar  would  not  constantly  be  coming  ofiF  the  rod 
and  causing  these  injuries.  Because  there  was 
an  obstruction  on  the  track  or  alongside  of  the 
track,  because  some  guard-rail  or  frog  is  not 
blocked,  because  someone  has  left  a  nail  sticking  up 
to  be  fallen  over,  and  do  you  know  that  we  average 
ten  of  these  nail  accidents  every  month?  Every 
month  we  have  ten  men  hurt  by  stepping  on  nails. 
The  section  foreman  comes  along,  takes  up  a  plank, 
and  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  times  out  of  a 

21 


thousand  he  leaves  the  plank  lying  alongside  the 
track  with  the  nails  sticking  up;  we  have  all  seen 
it,  one  might  almost  think  the  rules  required  that 
they  should  be  left  that  way.  And  every  time  you 
car  men,  or  train  men,  or  freight-house  men  knock 
a  cleat  off  a  car  you  throw  it  on  the  ground  with 
the  nails  sticking  up,  and  you  know  that  you  may 
forget  all  about  it  and  come  along  there  tomorrow 
night  and  step  on  it  yourself.  Now,  just  think  of  it ! 
For  twelve  months  we  have  averaged  ten  injuries 
of  that  kind  every  month.  I  remember  one  month 
when  we  had  seventeen  of  them.  I  have  given  this 
as  an  illustration  to  show  that  it  is  the  little  things, 
the  things  that  could  be  prevented  in  less  time  than 
it  takes  to  report  them. 

Before  I  lost  the  thread  of  my  story,  I  started 
to  say  that  out  of  the  eighty-three  thousand  three 
hundred  and  sixty-seven  railroad  men,  not  passen- 
gers, not  outsiders,  but  just  common  everyday 
railroad  employes  like  you  and  I,  seventy-seven 
thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixteen,  not  seventy- 
seven  hundred  or  seven  hundred,  but  seventy-seven 
thousand,  were  injured  in  these  little  accidents  in 
one  year,  in  these  little  things  which  could  have  been 
prevented  in  seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  cases,  in 
less  time  than  it  takes  you  men  to  make  out  Form 
148.  Just  think  of  it !  Generally  it  is  because  some 
one  is  thoughtless  rather  than  careless.  Rarely,  if 
ever,  is  the  cause  intentional,  but  just  because  we 
don't  think  what  will  happen  if  we  don't  do  things 
according  to  the  rules,  if  we  don't  do  things  in  the 
right  way,  if  we  don't  do  things  according  to  the 
rule  in  our  book,  which  is  almost  as  important  as 

22 


the  Golden  Rule,  and,  strange  to  say,  it  is  the  last 
rule  in  tl:e  book, — "Remember  that  it  is  better  to 
cause  a  delay  than  to  cause  an  accident."*  It  is  bet- 
ter to  cause  a  delay  than  an  accident.  That  is  what 
the  company  says  and  that  is  what  they  want,  and 
it  is  paying  us  for  our  time  and  yet  they  say  that 
it  is  better  every  time  to  cause  a  delay  than  an 
accident.  We  ought  to  have  this  rule  pasted  in  our 
hats ;  we  ought  to  comply  with  it,  and  if  we  did  we 
would  cut  out,  not  fifty  per  cent,  but  seventy-five 
per  cent  of  these  accidents  the  first  month. 

Now,  I  suppose  as  long  as  people  are  human,  as 
long  as  this  country  is  a  nation  of  chance-takers,  as 
everyone  knows  we  are,  we  will  take  a  chance  on 
everything  from  a  dog  fight  up  to  some  one  else'r 
wife.  I  see  there  are  some  fellows  here  who  have 
done  this,  of  course,  I  never  have,  but  we  really  are 
a  nation  of  chance-takers  in  this  country.  You 
all  know  how  it  is;  you  are  running  a  freight 
train,  and  you  want  to  get  home  to  meet  your 
girl  or  your  wife,  you  are  going  to  some  park 
or  show  or  dance,  and  you  are  anxious  to  get  there 
a  little  bit  ahead  of  time  and  in  order  to  do  it  you 
are  going  to  sneak  in  on  some  passenger  train's 
time  when  Rule  No.  86  says  you  must  clear  it  ten 
minutes.  You  may  do  this  twelve  times  and  noth- 
ing happens,  then,  the  thirteenth  time,  that  unlucky 
number — you  know  what  happened  to  John  Allen 
out  at  Flagg  a  little  while  ago — and  that  same  thing 
might  happen  to  any  of  you.    And  then  you  know 


*Copies  of  all  rules  referred  to  will  be  found  in  the 
Appendix. 


who  gets  canned,  and  it  isn't  the  train  dispatcher 
who  has  known  of  your  doing  it  the  other  times  and 
said  nothing.  I  will  illustrate  this  chance  theory 
by  telling  you  about  something  I  read  in  a  paper  the 
other  day,  taken  from  an  article  read  by  an  Attor- 
ney-General from  Missouri,  where  they  have  to 
show  people,  showing  the  number  of  murders  com- 
mitted in  this  country  in  proportion  to  those  com- 
mitted in  the  old  country.  In  Germany,  where 
they  enforce  the  law  (we  don't  do  it  here  any 
more  than  we  enforce  rules  on  the  railroad),  they 
have  four  murders  annually  for  every  million  peo- 
ple. In  the  United  States  where  they  don't  en- 
force the  laws,  they  have  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
nine  murders  for  every  million  people.  In  Germany 
where  they  enforce  the  rules  for  operating  railroads, 
they  have  less  than  one-half  the  fatalities  to  em- 
ployes that  we  have  in  the  United  States  in  propor- 
tion to  the  number  of  men  employed.  They  have 
one-half  the  fatalities  we  do  because  they  obey  the 
rules,  and  because  they  remember  that  it  is  better  to 
cause  a  delay  than  it  is  to  cause  an  accident. 

How  much  better  it  would  sound,  if  we  could 
have  reported  during  the  last  year  to  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission  that  there  were  seventeen 
hundred  employes  killed  on  the  railroads  of  the 
United  States,  instead  of  thirty-four  hundred. 
Woudn't  it  be  safer  today  for  all  the  rest  of  us  on 
the  North  Western  Railroad,  if  we  could  have  said 
that  there  were  fifty  employes  killed  instead  of  one 
hundred  and  seven?  Wouldn't  it  look  better?  Is 
there  any  reason  in  the  world  why  we  can't  run  our 
railroad  as  safely  as  they  run  their  roads  in  Ger- 

24 


many?  We  claim  to  employ  better  educated  men, 
men  of  higher  intelligence,  and  we  pay  better  wages. 
Why  can't  we  do  our  work  just  as  well  and  just  as 
safely  as  they  do  theirs,  and  if  we  did  it  as  well  and 
safely,  we  would  reduce  our  fatalities  at  least  two- 
thirds. 

Wouldn't  it  sound  better  if  we  could  say,  that 
instead  of  eighty-six  hundred  and  twenty-nine  men 
injured  we  had  four  thousand?  Wouldn't  it  de- 
crease the  risk  to  everyone  left  in  the  service  to 
have  four  thousand  injuries  instead  of  eight-six 
hundred?  Why  can't  we  do  that?  Are  they 
smarter,  any  better  over  there  in  Germany  than  we 
are?  And  I  want  to  tell  you  that  during  the  last 
ten  or  fifteen  years  when  the  railroads  have  been 
devoting  all  their  energies  to  getting  good  things 
instead  of  good  men,  of  course  I  don't  say  that  we 
haven't  good  men,  but  that  more  time  has  been  de- 
voted to  getting  good  things  for  the  roads.  I  want 
to  say  that  our  system  of  hiring  men  is  obsolete. 
We  haven't  any  system,  and  we  must  have  one. 
We  have  been  devoting  all  this  time  to  getting  fine 
engines,  fine  tracks,  better  cars,  better  apparatus, 
and  better  safety  things,  but  very  little  time  or  at- 
tention has  been  paid  to  getting  safety  men,  and 
if  we  had  devoted  as  much  time  and  thought  to 
getting  safety  men  as  we  have  to  getting  safety 
things  and  educating  the  men  after  we  got  them,  our 
accident  record  would  be  dififerent.  And  why  don't 
we  have  an  Instructor  of  Rules  and  Regulations 
the  same  as  we  have  an  instructor  of  air  brakes. 
Such  a  man  could  do  an  immense  amount  of  good 
in  the  way  of  educating  the  men  and  preventing 
accidents. 


Even  with  all  of  these  improved  safety  cars, 
safety  appliances,  safety  air-brakes  and  safety  en- 
gines, the  average  percentage  of  men  killed  and  in- 
jured among  employes,  has  increased  instead  of 
decreased  on  all  of  the  railroads  of  this  country. 
The  North  Western  is  not  alone  in  this,  the  other 
roads  are  just  as  bad,  and  some  of  them  a  whole 
lot  worse. 

I  am  giving  you  these  figures  from  the  reports 
of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  I  don't 
get  them  up:  In  the  United  States  in  1899,  there 
was  one  railroad  employe  out  of  every  four  hun- 
dred and  twenty  men,  women  and  children  em- 
ployed, killed. 

In  1907  there  was  one  railroad  employe  out  of 
every  three  hundred  and  sixty-nine  killed. 

In  1899,  one  out  of  every  twenty-seven  em- 
ployed was  injured. 

In  1907,  one  out  of  every  nineteen  employed 
was  injured.  Of  course  that  takes  in  all  of  you 
men  in  the  train  service,  engineers,  firemen,  con- 
ductors, brakemen  and  switchmen,  track  men,  sta- 
tion men,  etc.,  but  you  train  men  and  switchmen 
bear  the  brunt  of  this. 

In  1899,  there  was  one  of  you  for  every  one 
hundred  and  fifty-five  killed. 

In  1907  there  was  one  of  you  for  every  one 
hundred  and  twenty-five  killed,  not  passengers,  not 
outsiders,  but  for  every  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  train  men  in  the  year  of  1907,  there  was  one 
killed. 

In  1899,  there  was  one  of  every  eleven  of  you 
injured,  and  in  1907  conditions  had  become  so  bad 

M 


that  one  of  every  eight  of  you  was  injured.  That 
means  an  increase  of  fifty  per  cent.  And  it  must 
necessarily  mean,  either  that  you  men  are  more 
careless ;  that  we  do  not  have  as  good  men,  or  else 
we  do  not  have  as  good  supervision  as  in  former 
years.  I  don't  pretend  to  say  which  it  is.  You  are 
paying  three  and  four  dollars  a  seat  to  listen  to  me 
and  you  can  take  your  choice,  but  it  is  either  you 
men  or  the  superintendents  that  are  responsible  for 
this  increasing  risk  every  year  and  every  day  of 
every  year.  It  looks  to  me  as  though  it  was  six 
of  one  and  half  a  dozen  of  the  other.  But  I  don't 
care  who  you  decide  is  to  blame  so  long  as  you  do 
something  right  now  to  stop  this  slaughter.  Now, 
don't  you  think  it  would  be  safer  to  the  rest  of  you 
if  instead  of  one  in  eight,  there  should  be  one  in 
twenty-eight,  and  why  can't  you  make  it  so?  You 
can  if  you  want  to!  It  is  up  to  you.  It  is  just  a 
question  of  remembering  that  it  is  better  to  cause  a 
delay  than  to  cause  an  accident.  It  is  just  a  ques- 
tion of  being  thoughtful  of  the  rights  of  your 
neighbors,  of  being  regardful  of  the  fact  that  you 
owe  a  duty  to  others  as  well  as  yourself,  to  pre- 
vent death  or  injury,  and  you  can  do  it  if  you  want 
to.  If  you  don't  care,  nobody  else  is  going  to  care 
much,  and  if  you  can't  do  it,  nobody  in  God's  world 
can. 

Now,  I  want  to  tell  you  how  these  men  injured 
on  our  railroad  during  the  past  year,  are  divided 
into  classes  of  service.  Of  the  train  men,  that  is, 
brakemen,  conductors,  engineers  and  firemen,  there 
were  forty  killed  in  twelve  months,  and  thirty-four 

27 


hundred  and  sixty-eight  injured  in  twelve  months; 
that  is  ten  men  injured  every  day  in  that  service. 

There  were  seventeen  switchmen  killed  and  five 
hundred  and  forty-seven  injured  during  the  year. 
Can't  you  see  that  switchmen  kicking  the  draw-bar 
over  when  the  engine  is  about  two  feet  from  the 
car,  because  he  doesn't  remember  that  it  is  better 
to  cause  a  delay  than  to  cause  an  accident,  and  can't 
you  see  that  foot  as  it  comes  out  from  between  the 
draw-bars?  There  is  nothing  left  of  it  but  mush. 
That  is  just  one  of  the  thoughtless  things  that 
causes  five  hundred  and  forty-seven  injuries  and 
seventeen  deaths  in  twelve  months  to  switchmen. 
And  can't  you  see  that  switchman  standing  in  the 
middle  of  the  track  with  an  engine  coming  toward 
him  at  the  rate  of  six  or  eight  or  ten  miles  per  hour, 
sometimes  in  the  storm,  rain  and  sleet,  and  just  as 
the  engine  gets  to  him,  he  tries  to  get  on  the  foot- 
board, and  if  he  slips,  as  he  is  apt  to  do,  it  means 
certain  death  or  loss  of  limbs? 

In  this  same  twelve  months  there  were  seven 
station  men  killed  and  seven  hundred  and  seventy- 
nine  of  them  injured.  There  were  twenty-eight 
track  men  killed  and  eighteen  hundred  and  one  of 
them  injured.  I  want  you  to  think  of  those  twenty- 
eight  track  men  who  were  killed.  Nearly  all  of 
them  were  more  fortunate  than  some  of  the  rest 
of  us  in  having  a  flock  of  children.  They  were  all 
men  of  small  earning  capacity,  and  what  is  to  be- 
come of  the  mother  and  the  children,  what  does 
that  mother  have  to  do,  because  some  one  in  mere 
carelessness  has  taken  away  the  support  of  the 
family  ? 

18 


And  as  I  stand  here  talking  to  you  one  of  these 
fatal  cases  comes  to  me.  I  can  see  it  now  just  as 
it  happened.  A  couple  of  trackmen  coming  home 
on  the  hand  car,  a  fast  freight  comes  up  behind 
them,  then  the  men  try  to  stop  the  car  and  get 
it  off  the  track  before  the  engine  reaches  it.  The 
engineer  sees  them  pulling  and  tugging  at  the  hand 
car,  thinks  they  will  get  it  off,  does  not  slacken 
his  speed  until  he  is  almost  onto  the  car,  and  then 
it  is  too  late.  The  car  is  struck,  it  hits  one  of  the 
men,  and  there  is  another  railroad  funeral  and 
another  railroad  widow  and  three  or  four  orphans, 
all  because  the  engineer  didn't  think  and  exercise 
a  little  judgment  and  think  how  much  less  time  it 
would  have  taken  to  have  slacked  up  that  train  than 
it  did  to  make  a  report  of  the  accident,  and  how 
much  suffering,  destitution  and  misery  it  would 
have  saved. 

There  were  three  bridge  men  killed  and  two 
hundred  and  fifty-six  of  them  injured.  There  were 
two  car  inspectors  killed,  and  two  hundred  and 
thirty-three  of  them  injured.  We  have  all  seen  that 
car  inspector  or  car  repairer  get  killed ;  we  all  know 
exactly  how  it  happens.  Ninety-nine  per  cent  of  the 
fatal  cases  are  caused  by  the  men  going  under  a 
car  to  do  a  little  work  which  they  think  will  take 
only  three  or  four  minutes,  so  they  don't  put  up  a 
flag  as  required  by  Rule  26.  Some  of  you  fellows 
come  along,  there  is  no  flag  out,  you  don't  know 
anybody  is  there,  and  you  kick  some  cars  in.  The 
last  time  this  happened  was  at  Green  Bay.  The 
man  went  under  a  string,  the  last  car  in  the  string, 
and  forty  or  fifty  cars  from  the  switch.    He  didn't 


put  up  a  flag,  somebody  kicked  some  cars  in  there 
and  he  was  caught  and  crushed  to  death  between 
the  end  of  that  last  car  and  a  pile  of  sand  which  is 
put  up  there  for  a  bumping  post.  And  he  didn't  re- 
member that  it  would  be  better  to  cause  a  delay  of 
a  minute  in  that  work  while  he  went  down  to  the 
end  of  the  string  to  put  up  a  flag,  than  it  would  be 
to  cause  an  accident,  anc'  now  there  is  a  widow  and 
eight  children  down  there.  Think  of  it!  Do  you 
know  that  it  would  have  taken  him  less  time  to  put 
up  that  flag  than  it  took  the  foreman  to  report  the 
accident,  that  it  would  have  taken  less  time  to  pre- 
vent that  funeral  than  it  took  to  telegraph  that  a 
man  had  been  killed  ?  And  yet,  every  day  we  go  on 
doing  these  things  which  cause  these  accidents  and 
make  up  the  terrible  list  of  ten  thousand  five  hun- 
dred and  sixteen  people  killed  and  injured  in  twelve 
months.  These  are  the  cases  due  to  thoughtless- 
ness, these  are  the  cases  due  to  carelessness,  these 
are  the  cases  which  any  of  you  can  prevent  if  you 
want  to. 

Of  the  shop  men  and  the  round  house  men,  four 
were  killed  and  twelve  hundred  and  ninety-two 
were  injured.  Now,  think  of  it!  When  I  started 
out  over  the  North  Western  six  or  eight  weeks  ago, 
I  went  into  some  of  these  round  houses,  they  were 
disgraceful,  their  condition  was  appalling  and  inex- 
cusable. The  round  houses,  especially  in  the  night 
time  and  in  the  winter  when  they  are  full  of  gas  and 
smoke,  are  perhaps  as  dangerous  places  as  there  are 
on  the  railroad,  and  yet  I  could  hardly  go  into  a 
round  house  on  the  system  and  find  lights  burning. 
If  there  were  lights,  the  globes  were  so  dirty  and 

80 


black  no  light  could  show  through,  and  there  were 
electric  lights  that  had  burned  out  and  hadn't  been 
burning  for  months.  There  were  jacks,  wheel-bar- 
rows and  everything  else  put  just  where  you  men 
had  to  walk.  These  are  the  things  that  caused  so 
many  injuries  in  the  round  houses.  I  notice  now 
when  I  go  around  that  they  look  a  little  cleaner. 
The  place  down  here  at  Escanaba  is  so  different 
from  what  it  was  six  weeks  ago,  you  would  hardly 
know  it  to  be  the  same,  and  it  is  getting  to  be  so 
everywhere.  We  are  going  to  have  fewer  accidents 
because  we  are  commencing  to  remember  that  it  is 
better  to  cause  a  delay  than  to  cause  an  accident. 
You  have  boxes  down  there  now  to  put  tools  in, 
you  never  had  them  before.  They  are  getting  them 
all  over  the  railroad,  and  everywhere  on  the  system 
they  are  commencing  to  cover  these  dangerous  ma- 
chines and  dangerous  cog  wheels  and  belts.  Things 
look  better,  too,  and  it  is  the  example  on  the  part  of 
the  men  in  charge  that  is  going  to  bring  about  re- 
sults. We  are  all  apt  to  imitate  the  man  we  work 
for;  we  are  all  inclined  to  think  that  if  we  do  the 
work  as  well  as  he  does,  if  we  show  as  much  inter- 
est as  he  does,  we  are  doing  pretty  well.  Just  as 
soon  as  he  shows  an  interest  in  our  welfare,  in  pre- 
venting us  from  getting  hurt,  we  are  going  to  show 
an  interest  in  preventing  others  from  getting  hurt, 
and  that  is  what  is  going  to  happen  on  this  railroad. 
There  ought  to  be  a  committee  of  safety  in  every 
shop,  in  every  round  house,  and  on  every  operating 
division  of  the  railroad.  We  are  getting  them  on 
some  of  the  divisions ;  committees  of  employes,  not 
officers,  but  employes  who  are  getting  hurt.    They 

31 


should  tell  us  of  things  that  are  wrong,  tell  us  of 
the  things  they  see  every  day  that  are  wrong  but 
generally  say  nothing  about.  They  have  such  a 
committee  on  the  Minnesota  Division.  They  have 
one  in  the  shops  at  Winona.  They  have  one  down 
at  Fond  du  Lac,  they  have  them  on  all  the  divisions 
out  in  Iowa,  and  we  are  going  to  have  them  every- 
where. We  want  to  try  to  interest  you  men  in  this 
matter,  to  get  you  to  tell  us  about  the  men  who 
haven't  been  on  to  their  jobs,  as  many  of  them  have 
not,  any  more  than  you  have.  Such  committees, 
composed  of  the  right  kind  of  men,  can  do  a  world 
of  good  to  themselves  as  well  as  to  the  other  men. 
Just  as  soon  as  we  feel  that  it  is  a  duty  we  owe  to 
ourselves  and  to  our  fellow  employes  to  keep  the 
bad  men  out  of  the  service  and  to  get  good  men  in, 
just  so  much  sooner  we  will  have  one-half  or  one- 
third  of  the  accidents  that  we  have  today.  We  must 
enforce  the  rules.  Every  city,  every  municipality, 
every  state,  every  Government  has  its  set  of  laws 
in  order  that  business  may  be  conducted  in  art 
orderly  way,  and  so  it  must  be  with  a  railroad. 

Now,  we  are  taking  a  chance  in  this  country  on 
murder  at  the  rate  of  thirty  to  one  compared  to 
Germany,  not  because  we  are  more  bloodthirsty, 
but  because  we  take  more  chances.  We  get  mad 
and  kill  somebody,  then  get  a  shrewd  lawyer  to  get 
us  off.  What  do  we  railroad  men  do  when  we  have 
an  accident  through  our  own  carelessness,  when  we 
forget  to  flag  and  cause  an  accident,  and  some  one 
who  is  not  to  blame  gets  killed  ?  The  man  who  took 
the  chance,  who  didn't  put  out  the  flag  says,  "the 
committee  will  get  me  back,"  just  in  the  same  way 


you  take  your  chance  when  you  break  the  law  and 
get  some  shrewd,  clever  lawyer  to  try  to  get  you  off. 
At  the  very  time  the  committee  are  getting  this  man 
back,  and  he  ought  not  to  be  put  back,  another  man 
may  be  killed,  and  it  may  be  some  man  on  the  com- 
mittee, by  the  carelessness  of  the  very  man  that 
has  been  put  back  in  the  service.  And  yet  we  let 
our  sympathy  run  away  with  us,  and  increase  the 
risk  to  every  one,  by  putting  a  man  back  into  the 
service  when  we  know  that  he  is  absolutely  unfit 
and  unsafe  for  it. 

Now,  when  we  have  an  accident,  and  I  suppose 
we  will  have  some,  although  we  should  have  fifty 
per  cent  less  than  we  do  now,  the  first  thing  to  do, 
if  an  employe  or  passenger  is  injured  is  to  take 
care  of  him.  The  North  Western  Company  is, 
and  always  has  been,  in  all  the  years  I  have  been 
in  the  service,  ready  and  willing  to  pay  any  reason- 
able expense  in  taking  care  of  any  man  injured 
while  on  duty.  If  an  employe  is  killed  we  must 
take  care  of  his  body,  and  the  Company  is  willing 
to  pay  any  reasonable  expense  for  his  funeral. 
The  body  should  be  taken  care  of  gently  and  care- 
fully, just  as  you  would  want  your  father's  body 
cared  for,  and  taken  to  the  nearest  open  station,  in 
the  same  county  and  state  if  possible,  where  it  can 
be  cared  for  properly.  Don't  wait  for  the  coroner 
or  the  sheriff.  Some  of  us  are  superstitious  about 
moving  a  person  who  has  been  killed  in  an  accident 
until  authorized  by  the  coroner,  but  that  is  a  super- 
stition. The  body  should  be  taken  care  of,  and  if 
there  is  any  trouble  about  it  we  will  back  you  up 
in  it. 

33 


If  the  injured  man  is  able  to  go  to  a  doctor,  send 
him,  if  he  is  not  able  to  go,  send  for  the  doctor,  and 
when  you  send  for  the  doctor  tell  him  what  is 
wanted ;  tell  him  if  an  ambulance  is  needed  to  take 
the  man  to  the  hospital.  We  had  a  case  the  other 
day  out  at  Clinton,  Iowa,  a  town  twice  as  large  as 
this,  where  a  fireman  was  killed  and  fifteen  or  six- 
teen people  were  injured.  They  telephoned  the 
doctor  to  come  to  the  crossing,  they  thought  a  man 
was  dead  there,  and  that  is  all  they  told  him.  He 
went  down  there  without  any  appliances,  or  any 
way  of  taking  care  of  the  people  who  were  injured. 
Now,  just  think  of  that. 

We  had  another  case  in  Chicago,  less  than  a 
month  ago.  A  switchman  was  injured  about  ten 
o'clock  in  the  evening,  and  his  wife,  a  stranger  in 
the  city,  was  notified  by  telephone  at  half-past 
four  the  next  morning.  They  didn*t  have  the 
decency,  the  kindness,  to  go  and  tell  that  woman, 
or  to  get  some  neighbor  to  tell  her,  and  she 
was  left  to  wander  about  in  a  strange  city, 
in  the  dark,  to  find  the  hospital.  When  she 
finally  got  there,  her  husband  was  too  far  gone 
to  speak  to  her.  Those  are  the  things  which 
are  happening,  those  are  the  things  you  are 
bringing  on  yourselves,  just  because  you  don't 
think.  A  thing  like  that  is  inexcusable,  and 
it  brings  just  criticism  upon  us.  People  say  that 
an  organization  like  this,  which  is  bound  to  have 
some  accidents,  should  have  proper  facilities  and 
arrangements  for  taking  care  of  injured  people, 
and  you  all  know  or  ought  to  know  that  we  have  got 
them.    Therefore  look  after  the  women  and  children 

84 


of  the  men  who  are  killed  or  badly  injured.  All  you 
men  have  to  do  is  to  press  the  button  and  tell  what  is 
wanted  and  the  thing  will  be  done.  Think  of  how 
you  would  feel,  how  I  would  feel,  if  we  had  been 
injured  and  taken  to  the  hospital  away  from  our 
family,  and  the  hospital  is  the  only  place  to  take 
these  injured,  think  how  we  would  feel  if  our  wives, 
the  women  we  love  most  in  the  world,  had  been 
notified  five  hours  after  the  injury  and  left  to  come 
to  us  alone.  When  this  woman  reached  her  hus- 
band he  was  too  far  gone  to  speak ;  too  far  gone  to 
tell  her  the  things  he  wanted  her  to  know,  or  to 
leave  a  message  for  the  children.  He  had  waited 
for  her  five  hours  and  a  half,  and  she  should  have 
been  there  in  an  hour. 

And  when  an  employe  is  seriously  injured,  it 
will  do  a  lot  of  good  if  some  of  the  ofiBcers  of  the 
division  will  have  the  thoughtfulness  to  go  and  see 
him  and  sympathize  with  him  in  his  trouble.  I 
remember  a  case  which  I  saw  the  other  day  in 
which  a  switchman  who  had  been  employed  by  the 
company  for  fifteen  years  met  with  an  accident  in 
which  he  lost  both  his  legs  and  no  ofificer  of  the 
division,  not  even  the  agent,  although  his  office  is 
only  a  ten-minute  walk  from  the  hospital,  had  been 
to  see  the  man.  How  much  better  feeling  it  would 
make  among  the  men  if  some  attention  was  paid  to 
them  by  the  men  they  are  employed  under  when 
they  receive  these  terrible  injuries,  and  how  much 
better  the  officers  or  agents  would  feel  themselves, 
if  they  had  taken  the  trouble  to  show  some  interest 
in  the  man  who  was  hurt. 


Now,  after  the  injured  man  has  been  taken  car« 
of,  we  want  a  report  of  the  accident,  and  we  want 
that  report  to  tell  the  truth  about  it.  We  want  it  to 
tell  the  whole  truth,  not  a  part,  but  the  whole  truth. 
If  the  Company  is  to  blame  we  want  to  know  it;  if 
the  injured  man  is  to  blame,  we  want  to  know  it. 
If  the  accident  is  brought  about  by  reason  of  some 
defective  car  or  engine  we  want  to  know  it.  If  it 
is  brought  about  by  some  obstruction  or  draw-bar 
lying  down  in  the  yard — sometimes  they  do  lie 
there  for  weeks  at  a  time — we  want  to  know  it ;  and 
as  soon  as  the  injured  man  is  able  to  do  so,  we  want 
him  to  make  his  statement  on  the  same  form.  Why 
do  we  want  his  statement?  Because  we  know  that 
if  any  other  man  than  he  was  to  blame,  he  will 
tell  us  about  it.  If  it  is  the  fault  of  the  conductor, 
or  the  brakeman,  "the  fireman  or  the  engineer,  he 
will  tell  us.  If  the  car  was  bad,  or  the  engine  was 
bad,  he  will  tell  us,  because  it  is  human  nature  to 
lay  these  things  to  some  one  other  than  oneself. 
When  we  get  his  statement  it  is  easy  enough  to 
investigate  and  arrive  at  the  truth.  We  don't 
want  any  lying  for  the  Company  or  against  the 
Company,  and  we  don't  want  any  lying  for  the 
injured  man  or  against  the  injured  man;  we  want 
the  truth,  and  the  Company  is  always  willing  to  do 
what  is  fair.  Out  of  the  eighty-seven  hundred  men 
killed  and  injured  during  the  past  year,  we  had 
forty-eight  law  suits,  less  than  half  of  one-half  per 
cent.  I  give  this  as  an  illustration  of  the  fact  that 
the  Company  is  willing  to  do  what  is  fair  in  these 
cases. 

as 


And  speaking  of  making  reports,  let  me  call 
your  attention  to  Rule  914,  requiring  every  employe 
of  the  company  who  witnesses  an  accident  to  make 
a  report  of  it  on  Form  148.  The  importance  of 
complying  with  this  rule  was  illustrated  in  a  cross- 
ing accident  at  Mayfair  a  few  weeks  ago  of  which 
one  of  the  division  officers  was  the  most  import- 
ant witness,  in  fact  did  all  he  could  to  prevent 
the  accident  by  calling  to  the  person  driving  the 
team  to  stop  and  by  waving  his  coat  to  call  atten- 
tion to  the  approaching  train — and  then  neglected 
to  make  any  report  of  what  he  knew  about  the  mat- 
ter. 

If  the  accident  occurs  because  something  is 
wrong  with  the  car  or  the  engine,  then  the  con- 
ductor and  engineer  in  charge  of  the  train,  and  the 
man  in  charge  of  the  shop,  station  or  track,  should 
make  an  inspection  right  away  to  find  out  if  any- 
thing is  wrong,  and  if  there  is,  repair  it.  If  you 
don't  find  anything  wrong  you  must  report  it,  and 
when  the  car  or  engine  gets  to  a  terminal  we  want 
an  inspector  to  look  it  over.  The  double  inspection 
will  determine  whether  or  not  it  is  in  good  order, 
and  we  want  the  truth  about  it. 

I  remember  an  accident  which  occurred  on  the 
Madison  Division  a  short  time  ago,  where  a  brake- 
man  was  caught  between  the  man  killers.  We  sent 
a  car  inspector  out  to  examine  the  car  and  he  said 
there  was  no  man  killer  on  it.  I  don't  know  whether 
this  man  saw  the  car  or  not,  but  when  I  sent  a  man 
to  examine  the  car  he  found  the  man  killers  on  the 
car,  and  of  course  he  didn't  put  them  on,  and  we 
didn't  put  them  on.    The  car  was  a  foreign  car. 

37 


We  had  another  case  the  other  night,  a  young 
fellow  fell  off  some  cars,  and  he  said  he  didn't  know 
how  it  happened.  We  sent  out  to  have  the  cars  in- 
spected and  the  report  came  back  that  they  were  all 
right,  and  the  running  boards  were  all  right.  I 
couldn't  understand  how  he  could  fall  off  if  every- 
thing was  all  right,  so  I  sent  out  and  had  the  cars 
photographed.  There  were  holes  in  those  running- 
boards  big  enough  to  put  your  foot  in.  We  don't 
want  any  such  lying  reports.  I  am  something  of  a 
word-painter  myself,  and  if  we  didn't  want  the  truth 
I  could  make  the  reports.  Perhaps  I  could  do  bet- 
ter than  a  car  inspector. 

It  is  just  the  same  way  when  engines  set  fires 
along  the  track.  We  have  never  had  as  much 
trouble  as  we  have  had  this  dry  year.  Until  we 
began  to  stir  the  matter  up  a  while  ago,  you  couldn't 
find  an  engine  on  the  North  Western  Road  that  was 
not  in  perfect  condition.  Month  after  month  the  in- 
spection books  in  the  round  houses  would  show 
them  in  good  condition,  and  there  was  never  any 
record  of  repairs.  Now  everyone  knows  that  these 
were  fake  reports,  that  they  are  no  good  and  worse 
than  useless  because  they  are  a  means  of  trying  to 
deceive  some  one  who  has  a  right  to  know  the  truth. 
Did  you  ever  hear  the  latest  definition  of  a  lie?  A 
lie  is  a  misstatement  of  a  fact  to  the  man  who  has 
a  right  to  know  the  truth.  Now,  I  have  a  right  to 
know  the  truth,  the  Company  has  a  right  to  know 
it.  Therefore,  in  making  an  inspection  of  an 
engine,  either  in  good  or  bad  condition,  make  a 
truthful  report  of  it.  It  is  absolutely  useless  to 
keep  a  record  unless  it  is  accurate  and  truthful.  We 
want  facts,  we  want  the  truth. 


Carelessness  of  this  kind  in  making  inspections 
of  cars  or  engines  after  an  accident  has  resulted 
from  the  same,  will  explain  why  we  have  so  many 
injuries  resulting  from  engines  and  cars  being 
in  a  defective  condition  and  why  the  inspections 
which  are  now  being  made  do  not  discover  these 
defects  in  time  to  remedy  the  same  before  an 
injury  results.  Probably  we  never  will  have  the 
right  kind  of  inspection  of  engines,  cars  or  machin- 
ery until  the  man  who  makes  the  inspection  is  not 
charged  with  the  duty  of  making  the  necessary  re- 
pairs and  does  not  report  to  somebody  who  has  the 
responsibility  of  making  such  repairs,  but  until  that 
time  comes,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  ought  to  do  bet- 
ter than  we  do  now,  in  making  such  inspections,  and 
if  we  did  we  would  not  have  had  during  the  last 
twelve  months  one  hundred  and  twenty-seven  men 
injured  on  account  of  defective  engines,  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-six  men  injured  on  account  of  de- 
fective cars  and  two  killed,  and  if  the  inspectors  were 
required  to  test  the  grab-irons,  rungs  of  ladders  and 
coupling  apparatus  and  get  up  on  the  top  of  cars 
and  inspect  the  roofs  and  running  boards,  and  the 
engine  inspectors  were  required  to  thoroughly  in- 
spect and  test  the  throttles  and  brakes  of  engines 
and  nettings  we  would  not  have  so  many  accidents 
caused  by  men  falling  from  cars,  because  of  ladder 
rungs  being  loose  or  gone  or  grab-irons  being 
jammed  in  close  to  the  ends  of  cars  so  that  men 
could  not  get  hold  of  them,  and  men  would  not  be 
falling  off  of  cars  because  of  running  boards  being 
defective  or  nails  sticking  up,  and  there  would  not 
be  so  many  men  injured  when  going  between  cars 


to  uncouple  them,  on  account  of  the  coupling  ap- 
paratus being  defective. 

Whenever  an  accident  occurs,  it  is  a  notice  to 
the  division  officials  or  man  in  charge  of  the  v^ork, 
that  there  may  be  something  wrong  in  the  method 
of  doing  the  work  or  in  his  organization  and  the 
matter  should  be  immediately  investigated  to  de- 
termine what,  if  anything,  is  wrong,  in  order  that 
a  remedy  may  be  applied  and  a  repetition  of  the 
occurrence  avoided,  and  that  investigation  ought 
to  be  made  by  some  one  other  than  the  person  who 
may  be  to  blame  for  the  conditions  that  brought 
about  the  accident.  And  when  an  accident  does 
occur  which  blocks  traffic,  notice  of  conditions 
should  be  given  to  patrons  who  come  to  our  sta- 
tions to  take  passage  on  trains  so  that  they  will 
have  an  opportunity  of  deciding  what  they  wish 
to  do  and  to  avail  themselves  of  other  means  of 
transportation  if  there  are  any. 

In  this  great  business  which  we  are  carrying  on, 
the  most  essential  thing  is  safety.  Not  alone  safety 
to  passengers,  or  to  the  property  which  is  being 
transported,  or  to  people  who  are  crossing  our 
tracks,  but  above  and  beyond  all  other  essentials, 
safety  to  the  men,  to  the  employes  who  are  running 
the  railroad.  If  we  can  get  safety  to  you  men  who 
are  running  the  road,  safety  to  others  will  follow, 
because  if  you  are  looking  out  for  your  own  safety 
you  will  be  looking  out  for  everyone  and  everything 
entrusted  to  your  care.  We  will  have  regularity  in 
running  trains,  everything  will  be  done  so  much 
easier  and  better  that  you  will  not  know  the  road. 
You  boys  here  can  do  it. 

40 


One  of  the  reasons  why  the  Management  asked 
me  to  talk  to  you  about  this  matter  today,  was  be- 
cause they  thought  if  you  knew  of  some  of  the  acci- 
dents other  people  were  having,  and  could  know 
how  they  were  caused,  that  you  might  not  be 
obliged  to  get  wisdom  from  accidents  of  your  own. 
A  great  surgeon  once  said  to  me  that  there  were  two 
very  important  things  in  the  world,  one  knowledge, 
and  the  other  wisdom;  that  knowledge  could  be 
gained  from  books  and  other  people's  experience, 
but  that  wisdom  came  from  one's  own  experiences. 
The  Management  believe  that  if  you  should  know 
of  the  accidents  that  are  happening  on  other  divis- 
ions, in  other  yards,  and  the  cause  of  them,  that 
you  would  not  be  obliged  to  get  your  wisdom  from 
having  a  death  or  an  injury  up  here  among  your- 
selves. I  have,  therefore,  been  asked  to  come  to 
you  and  to  tell  you  a  part  of  the  story — I  couldn't 
tell  it  all — if  I  did  it  would  take  me  a  month  to  tell 
the  story  which  has  been  accumulating  for  twenty- 
five  or  thirty  years.  But  I  will  give  you  a  few 
cases  as  illustrations : 

A  couple  of  years  ago  we  had  a  collision  between 
Madison  and  Afton,  I  think  it  was  between  a  passen- 
ger and  a  freight.  The  passenger  train  had  the 
right  of  way,  the  freight  train  had  orders  to  wait 
until  the  passenger  train  came  in.  A  passenger 
train  did  come  in  but  it  was  not  the  train  the 
freight  had  orders  against.  The  conductor  and 
engineer  did  not  ask  the  men  on  the  passenger  train 
by  word  of  mouth,  as  Rule  90A  says  they  must, 
whether  it  was  the  train  they  had  orders  against. 
The  train  the  freight  was  waiting  for  was  a  Madi- 

41 


son  Division  train  and  the  train  which  came  in  was 
a  Wisconsin  Division  train.  They  were  about  the 
same  size.  The  conductor  went  out  and  looked,  the 
engineer  didn't  do  anything,  and  thought  it  was  the 
right  train,  but  he  didn't  ask,  and  pulled  out  from 
the  station,  and  a  mile  and  a  half  from  the  station 
he  met  the  other  train.  Engineer  Lafferty,  one  fire- 
man and  one  other  person  were  killed  and  fifteen 
or  sixteen  people  were  injured.  No  one  was  killed 
on  the  train  which  had  no  right  to  the  road;  the 
men  who  were  not  to  blame  were  killed,  and  as  we 
all  know  that  is  usually  the  way. 

A  year  after  that  accident  we  had  another  ex- 
actly the  same  kind  from  exactly  the  same  cause. 
This  one  happened  at  Peoria.  Now,  it  shouldn't  be 
necessary  for  you  men  up  here  to  have  that  kind  of 
an  accident  on  the  Peninsula  Division  in  order  to  get 
wisdom.  You  ought  to  be  able  to  get  knowledge 
from  what  happened  on  the  Madison  and  Galena 
Divisions.  These  accidents  should  demonstrate 
to  you  absolutely  the  necessity  of  complying  with 
that  rule,  not  only  that  rule,  but  all  the  rules. 
These  rules  have  been  made  by  men  like  you  who 
have  come  up  from  the  ranks,  men  who  have  learned 
through  many  sad  experiences  that  these  rules  and 
their  observance  are  necessary.  Every  time  we 
break  one  of  these  rules  we  take  the  risk  upon  our- 
selves of  killing  or  injuring  someone — perhaps  it 
may  be  a  brother,  or  son,  or  father.  Have  we  any 
right  to  do  that,  are  any  of  us  so  thoughtless,  so 
careless,  so  hardened  that  we  would  want  to  do  a 
thing  like  that  ? 


The  other  night  a  man  named  Hugh  Morris, — 
perhaps  many  of  you  know  him,  he  used  to  run  an 
engine  on  the  Wisconsin  Division  and  is  now  Mas- 
ter Mechanic  of  the  Galena  Division, — went  out  to 
Crystal  Lake,  a  little  station  out  from  Chicago. 
Now,  it  is  a  rule  that  we  must  not  kick  cars  over  a 
highway  crossing.  I  think  it  is  Rule  102a  and  102b 
which  says,  "If  you  are  going  to  move  cars  over  a 
highway  crossing  and  there  isn't  a  flagman  sta- 
tioned there,  you  train  men  must  put  a  flagman 
there."  Well,  Morris  started  to  cross  the  track  in 
the  dark  and  a  freight  car  without  any  lights  is 
kicked  over  the  crossing  knocking  him  down.  For- 
tunately he  got  hold  of  the  grab  iron  of  the  car  as  it 
struck  him,  and  although  he  was  dragged  thirty 
feet  he  got  away  with  no  injury  beyond  a  shaking 
up.  I  simply  give  you  this  as  an  illustration  of 
what  may  happen  tomorrow  to  you,  to  Mr.  Linsley, 
to  me,  or  any  of  us.  Suppose  Morris  had  been 
killed,  and  if  the  accident  had  happened  to  a  woman 
or  a  child  or  a  less  active  man,  they  would  have 
been  killed.  Do  you  suppose  his  wife  would  have 
been  satisfied  with  any  explanations  regarding  the 
cause  of  his  death  ?  Wouldn't  she  say,  and  wouldn't 
she  have  a  right  to  say  that  the  man  guilty  of  caus- 
ing his  death  was  guilty  of  murder  or  manslaugh- 
ter? Do  you  know  what  is  being  said  of  us  every 
day?  That  we  are  careless,  reckless  devils,  and  we 
don't  care  whether  we  kill  or  injure  people  or  not, 
and  yet  eighty  per  cent  of  the  people  killed  and  in- 
jured are  we  employes  of  the  Road.  Tomorrow 
night  it  may  happen  to  some  one  of  you  sitting  here, 
just  because  someone  is  careless  and  reckless. 
43 


These  conditions  exist  not  only  at  Escanaba,  but 
everywhere  on  the  system.  The  rules  of  the  Com- 
pany require  that  guard-rails  and  frogs  in  the  yards 
shall  be  blocked,  and  yet  the  yards  here  and  in  many 
other  places  are  a  disgrace.  You  can  scarcely  find 
any  blocking.  It  would  astound  you  to  go  through 
these  yards  and  see  the  number  of  guard  rails  and 
frogs  which  are  unblocked.  I  will  bet  that  fifty  per 
cent  of  them  haven't  any  blocking,  and  it  isn't  only 
here,  it  is  so  everywhere.  You  know  what  happens 
to  a  man  when  he  gets  his  foot  caught  in  that  frog 
or  guard  rail  and  it  isn't  blocked.  You  can  see  him 
there  with  his  foot  fast,  wriggling  and  pulling, 
swearing  and  praying,  trying  to  get  his  foot  out. 
You  can  see  him  there,  and  you  can  see  the  car 
coming  towards  him,  it  may  be  one  of  those  hun- 
dred thousand  capacity  cars,  every  instant  it  comes  a 
foot  closer  and  in  two  or  three  seconds  the  man  is 
down ;  you  can  see  the  car  going  over  him,  you  can 
hear  the  bones  crush,  and  when  he  is  taken  out  he 
is  either  legless  or  a  corpse.  The  last  time  an  acci- 
dent like  that  happened  it  was  on  the  Galena  Divis- 
ion, and  as  nice  a  boy  as  any  sitting  here  lost  his 
legs.  Now,  what  section  foreman,  or  road  master 
can  excuse  himself  for  that?  Do  you  suppose  that 
boy  ever  thinks  of  them  without  cursing  them?  If 
he  had  been  killed,  do  you  suppose  his  widow  and 
his  children  would  ever  think  of  them  without  curs- 
ing them?  Is  a  crime  like  this  anything  less  than 
manslaughter?  And  yet,  it  would  have  taken  less 
time  to  block  that  guard-rail  in  which  the  boy  was 
caught  and  lost  both  of  his  legs,  than  it  would  to 
make  a  report  of  the  accident.    Those  are  the  things 

44 


I 


that  bring  us  not  only  into  disrepute  but  disgrace, 
and  they  can  be  avoided,  they  can  be  prevented, 
must  be  prevented,  and  you  are  the  men  to  do  it. 

Let  us  take  as  an  illustration  a  switch  engine, 
perhaps  down  here  in  the  yards,  which  has  a  loose 
grab-iron.  The  engineer  knows  it,  but  he  doesn't 
say  anything  about  it,  or  perhaps  he  patches  it  up 
himself  and  it  is  pushed  in  so  that  when  you  want 
it,  and  when  you  do  want  it  you  want  it  bad,  you 
can't  get  your  hand  on  it.  It  would  take  less  time 
to  report  the  condition  and  get  a  new  iron  than  it 
would  to  report  the  accident  which  surely  follows 
a  neglect  of  that  kind.  It  is  your  duty  to  prevent 
someone  from  getting  killed  or  injured  if  you  can. 
It  is  a  duty  you  owe  to  your  self,  to  your  family, 
and  to  other  people. 

Take  for  example  the  unloading  of  material 
from  cars,  when  it  is  piled  up  alongside  the  track 
and  the  rule.  No.  1016,  says  there  should  be  six 
feet  clearance  so  men  will  not  be  knocked  oflf  cars. 
Go  down  into  the  yards  and  see  how  the  men  com- 
ply with  the  rule.  Some  careless  devil  will  unload  a 
telegraph  pole  or  a  telephone  pole,  or  ties  or  rails  or 
boards,  or  will  unload  something  three  feet  instead 
of  six  from  the  tracks.  Some  one  will  see  it  but 
say  nothing  about  it,  and  tomorrow  night  you,  or 
your  brother,  or  some  one  may  be  riding  on  the  side 
of  a  car  and  you  will  get  it  in  the  neck. 

Another  class  of  avoidable  accidents  is  that  oc- 
casioned by  having  side  doors  of  freight  cars  fly  out 
as  they  are  passing  a  train  and  injure  a  passenger 
or  employe  on  the  other  train.  We  have  had  a  num- 
ber of  cases  of  this  kind  recently.    The  last  was  that 

45 


of  a  brakeman  killed  on  the  Wisconsin  Division. 
Rule  No.  862  requires  that  all  doors  in  freight  cars 
shall  be  closed  and  fastened.  If  some  effort  was 
made  to  compel  compliance  with  this  rule,  accidents 
of  that  kind,  the  risk  of  which  is  increasing  every 
day  with  the  increasing  number  of  trains,  could 
easily  be  avoided.  Why  not  have  a  rule  requiring 
the  sealing  of  empty  box  cars  ?  It  would  absolutely 
prevent  such  accidents. 

Now,  you  know  we  have  a  rule,  No.  812,  which 
requires  us  when  we  put  cars  on  a  side-track  to  leave 
them  in  far  enough  to  clear  a  man  on  the  next  train 
coming  in.  It  is  your  duty  to  observe  this  rule, 
your  duty  to  the  man  coming  in  after  you,  and  he 
may  be  a  brother  or  a  cousin  or  a  brother-in-law 
or  a  brother  of  some  girl  you  want  to  marry  who 
will  be  following  you  on  the  next  train.  But  what 
happens?  You  go  along  thoughtlessly  leaving  one 
of  the  cars  sticking  out  just  far  enough  to  strike 
him  if  he  is  riding  on  the  side  of  a  car,  and  if  he 
goes  down  you  know  what  will  happen — he  will 
lose  a  leg,  or  an  arm,  or  be  killed.  Now,  why  not 
push  that  car  far  enough  to  clear  a  man?  Why 
not  think  of  the  result  to  the  next  man  that  comes 
along?  That  is  what  you  would  want  him  to  do 
for  you. 

Another  class  of  accidents  which  are  occurring 
altogether  too  frequently  is  occasioned  by  the 
thoughtlessness  of  the  engineer.  A  case  occurred 
recently  at  Waukegan,  Illinois.  A  man,  a  passenger, 
was  walking  alongside  the  track  toward  the  station 
and  was  struck  and  killed  by  an  engine  hauling  a 
passenger  train  going  north.    A  freight  train  going 

46 


south  evidently  attracted  the  attention  of  the  pros- 
pective passenger.  The  engineer  saw  him  with  two 
companions  walking  along  the  side  of  the  track  on 
which  his  train  was  moving,  and  he  also  saw  the 
train  moving  in  the  other  direction,  but  took  it  for 
granted  the  man  would  keep  far  enough  from  the 
rail  to  avoid  injury  and  he  made  no  effort  to  warn 
him,  with  the  result  that  the  man  was  killed. 

We  have  recently  had  a  number  of  accidents  oc- 
casioned by  coal  falling  from  the  tanks  of  engines, 
the  result  of  carelessness  in  dumping  coal  on  the 
engine  or  by  overloading  the  tanks.  Generally  the 
people  injured  are  employes  working  in  the  yards 
or  on  the  tracks.  Sometimes  they  are  pedestrians 
on  the  highway.  One  can  readily  imagine  what  will 
happen  to  a  man  if  a  chunk  of  coal  falls  on  him 
from  a  tank  of  an  engine  going  forty  or  fifty  miles 
an  hour.  And  we  had  just  such  an  injury  the  other 
day  to  a  trackman  at  Council  Bluffs.  The  slightest 
care  in  taking  coal,  a  little  thought  on  the  part  of 
the  man  doing  this  work,  would  prevent  such  acci- 
dents. And  can't  you  see  that  fireman  taking  that 
coal,  standing  between  the  cab  and  coal  chute  so 
that  if  the  engine  has  a  leaky  throttle,  the  air  is  not 
properly  set  or  the  engineer  moves  her  when  he 
shouldn't,  that  the  fireman  will  be  sure  and  get 
caught  between  the  cab  and  the  chute  and  be  in- 
jured, whereas,  if  he  complied  with  the  rule  and 
stood  on  the  side  of  the  chute  away  from  the  cab 
and  anything  happened  to  cause  the  engine  to  move 
unexpectedly,  he  would  be  safe  from  injury.  Why 
don't  you  firemen  do  this  and  stop  this  class  of 
injuries  ? 

47 


A  short  time  ago  we  had  a  passenger  train  de- 
railed at  an  interlocking  plant,  caused  by  a  defect 
in  the  same  which  had  been  discovered  by  the  main- 
tainer,  but  he  seemed  to  be  unable  to  repair  it  and 
he  also  neglected  to  report  it.  If  he  had  reported  it, 
of  course  the  train  would  have  been  required  to 
slow  up  or  wait  until  the  defect  was  found  and 
repaired.  I  cite  this  just  as  an  instance  of  how  a 
little  lack  of  thought  or  care  may  bring  about  a 
serious  accident. 

Rule  No.  855  prohibits  any  person  from  riding 
on  the  pilot  of  an  engine,  and  yet,  during  the  past 
year  we  have  had  three  employes  killed  and  three 
seriously  injured  doing  that  very  thing.  One  of 
these  men  was  riding  on  the  draw-bar  on  the  pilot 
of  an  engine  in  the  night  time  and  the  engine  col- 
lided with  a  train.  The  man  was  killed.  Every- 
body knows  that  it  is  against  the  rules  to  ride  on 
the  pilot  or  get  on  the  pilot  while  the  engine  is  in 
motion,  and  yet  it  is  done  every  day  and  no  one 
is  disciplined,  and  seemingly  no  one  is  cautioned 
not  to  do  it.  Why  don't  you  superintendents  and 
train  masters  who  can't  help  seeing  this  rule  disre- 
garded every  day,  if  you  use  your  eyes,  stop  it.  It 
seems  to  me  that  if  some  instruction  was  given  or 
some  discipline  was  administered  in  cases  of  this 
kind,  when  no  one  is  injured,  and  the  necessity  of 
complying  with  the  rule  explained  to  the  employe, 
very  many  of  our  accidents  would  be  avoided. 

Another  positive  rule.  Rule  No.  834,  prohibits 
outsiders  riding  on  an  engine,  and  yet,  only  a  short 
time  ago,  in  one  of  our  busy  terminals,  a  stock  man 
was  told  to  get  on  an  engine  to  go  to  the  stock 

48 


yards.  The  reason  given  was  that  his  car,  which 
had  come  in  on  one  train  and  been  set  out,  was 
picked  up  by  another  train  of  fifty  or  sixty  cars  and 
put  next  to  the  engine.  In  order  to  avoid  stopping 
the  train  when  the  caboose  came  along,  the  man  was 
told  to  get  on  to  the  engine.  On  the  way  to  the 
yards  one  of  the  flues  burst,  the  cab  was  filled  with 
steam  and  the  stock  man  in  order  to  avoid  injury 
on  account  of  the  bursting  flue,  jumped  from  the 
engine  on  to  an  adjacent  track  on  which  a  train  was 
moving,  and  he  was  struck  and  seriously  injured  by 
this  other  train.  This  class  of  accidents  is  clearly 
of  a  kind  which  could  be  avoided  if  the  rule  was 
complied  with,  as  it  should  be,  because  certainly  the 
cab  of  an  engine  is  no  place  for  outsiders  to  ride. 

You  brakemen  and  switchmen,  who  go  between 
moving  cars — the  couplings  won't  work  and  you  go 
in  between  to  pull  the  pin,  you  know  that  sometimes 
they  don't  work  one  minute  and  the  next  minute 
they  work  all  right.  Rule  854a,  I  think  it  is,  says 
you  shall  not  do  this,  but  you  take  the  chance.  The 
last  poor  boy  that  took  that  chance  was  up  in  Wis- 
consin; just  as  nice  a  boy  as  there  is  here,  and  he 
has  a  good  wife  and  three  little  children,  just  as  nice 
children  as  yours  or  mine.  He  didn't  remember  that 
it  was  better  to  cause  a  delay  to  that  train  than  it  was 
to  cause  an  accident  to  himself,  and  so  he  went  in 
between  the  moving  cars ;  when  over  a  split  switch 
about  half  way  he  stumbled  on  a  piece  of  coal 
that  had  been  carelessly  left  there  and  his  foot 
went  down  between  the  rails.  When  that  train  got 
through  with  him  he  had  his  left  arm  and  left  leg 
left,  the  others  were  gone,  just  because  he  didn't 

49 


remember  that  it  is  better  to  cause  a  delay  than  an 
accident.  Is  there  any  excuse  for  that  kind  of 
work?  Think  of  the  suffering  that  man  must  go 
through  and  in  the  end  be  maimed  for  life.  Money 
will  not  pay  for  a  thing  like  that.  Just  think  of 
the  humiliation,  aside  from  the  suffering!  Did  it 
ever  occur  to  you  how  different  every  crippled  man 
is  from  the  rest  of  us,  how  it  must  feel  not  to  have 
your  arms  and  legs,  not  to  be  normal  like  other 
people?  I  never  thought  of  it  until  a  little  while 
ago,  I  slipped  crossing  a  street  in  Chicago,  and 
sprained  my  leg.  I  was  as  lame  as  the  devil,  and 
every  time  I  met  anyone  that  knew  me,  I  instinct- 
ively straightened  up  and  pretended  that  I  was  not 
lame,  because  I  was  ashamed  of  it.  Think  of  this 
man  having  to  go  all  his  life  with  one  leg  and  one 
arm  gone  from  the  same  side.  And  it  would  have 
taken  less  time  to  have  stopped  those  cars  and 
opened  that  coupler  in  the  safe  way,  in  the  way  the 
Company  said  to  do  it,  and  in  the  way  the  Company 
was  paying  him  to  do  it,  than  it  did  to  telegraph  me 
about  the  accident. 

Another  case,  an  employe  killed  at  one  of  the 
terminals,  by  an  engineer  starting  his  engine  on  the 
elevated  tracks  without  ringing  his  bell.  The  man 
killed  was  foreman  of  a  switch  engine  which  was 
coming  over  from  Wood  street  to  40th  street.  On 
the  way  over  he  met  another  engine  which  was 
stalled  with  a  train.  At  the  request  of  the  crew  of 
the  stalled  train  he  coupled  on  his  engine  and  pulled 
them  over  to  40th  street.  When  he  got  there  he 
uncoupled  his  engine  and  sent  it  ahead  then  started 
to  walk  over  to  it.     The  engine  which  he  had  as- 

50 


sisted  over  from  Wood  street  started  up  without 
ringing  the  bell,  ran  over  and  killed  him.  Rules 
No.  30  and  30a  require  that  bells  shall  be  rung  when 
an  engine  is  about  to  move  and  while  switching  on 
the  elevated  tracks,  and  certainly  when  an  engine 
has  been  standing  still  and  has  started  up,  whether 
it  is  on  elevated  tracks  or  on  tracks  at  grade,  the  bell 
should  be  rung  to  give  notice  that  it  is  about  to  be 
moved.  If  that  had  been  done  in  this  case,  a  man's 
life  would  probably  have  been  saved,  and  a  widow 
and  three  or  four  children  would  not  be  left  in 
mourning,  destitution  and  misery.  And  think  how 
much  less  time  it  would  have  taken  to  start  that  bell 
than  it  did  to  make  a  report  of  the  accident,  and  how 
much  it  increases  the  risk  to  the  rest  of  you  men  to 
have  such  a  man  taken  out  of  the  service  and  the 
man  who  caused  his  death  left  in  the  service. 

We  recently  had  a  case  up  in  Minnesota,  a  pas- 
senger coach  was  standing  at  the  platform  for  pas- 
sengers to  embark.  One  passenger  got  on  the  train 
and  went  in  the  car,  and  just  as  he  was  about  to  sit 
down  some  other  cars  were  kicked  against  the  coach ; 
he  was  thrown  against  the  seat  and  seriously  injured. 
If  switching  of  this  kind  must  be  done  before  the 
train  starts  from  the  station,  it  seems  to  me  that  it 
would  be  an  easy  matter  to  prevent  passengers  from 
going  into  the  coach  until  the  train  is  ready  to  re- 
ceive them,  or  if  they  are  allowed  to  get  on  the  car, 
and  there  is  to  be  any  switching  done,  the  cars  to 
be  coupled  to  the  coach  should  be  attached  to  the 
engine,  then  accidents  of  this  kind  would  be  pre- 
vented. 

51 


Another  case,  an  employe  killed  up  in  Michigan, 
the  accident  caused  by  one  of  the  hooks  of  a  coal 
chute  breaking.  From  the  investigations  which  have 
been  made  in  these  cases,  it  appears  that  little  or  no 
inspection  is  made  of  these  coal  sheds  and  chutes 
to  see  that  they  are  kept  in  proper  repair,  and  there 
is  no  place  except  a  round  house  where  wood  and 
iron  will  rot  and  rust  as  quickly  as  it  will  around  a 
coal  shed,  on  account  of  the  steam,  gas  and  smoke 
which  is  constantly  escaping  from  the  engines.  A 
proper  and  frequent  inspection  of  places  of  this 
kind  would  prevent  such  accidents.  Only  a  short 
time  ago  we  had  a  foreman  of  carpenters  killed 
coming  down  a  ladder  at  one  of  these  coal  sheds. 
The  nails  had  rusted  out  and  when  he  put  his 
weight  on  the  ladder  rung,  down  he  went  thirty 
feet. 

During  the  past  year  we  had  one  employe  killed 
and  thirteen  injured  by  overhead  obstructions. 
Two  were  killed  and  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
two  injured  by  obstructions  on  the  ground  along- 
side the  track.  Rule  No.  1016  requires  all  obstruc- 
tions to  be  six  feet  from  the  rail.  The  rule  also 
prohibits  coal,  draw-bars  and  other  obstructions 
from  lying  in  the  yards  adjacent  to  the  tracks.  In 
going  through  some  of  the  yards  one  would  get  the 
impression  that  the  rule  meant  that  the  obstruction 
should  be  left  on  the  ground  instead  of  requiring 
them  to  be  picked  up.  As  a  result  of  this  careless- 
ness a  large  number  of  employes  are  killed  and  in- 
jured. Possibly  if  some  of  the  men  in  charge  of 
these  yards  were  injured  themselves  by  falling  over 
the  obstructions,  or  if  they  were  disciplined  for  fail- 

&2 


ure  to  see  that  they  are  kept  clean  (and  some  of 
them  look  as  if  they  hadn't  been  cleaned  for 
months),  we  would  have  fewer  accidents.  If  a 
regular  inspection  was  made  of  these  yards  these 
avoidable  accidents  would  be  prevented  in  less  time 
than  it  takes  to  make  a  report  of  them,  and  fewer 
widows  and  orphans  would  be  left  to  complain  of 
the  carelessness  of  railroad  employes. 

And  while  talking  of  obstructions  I  want  to  call 
your  attention  to  the  fact  that  many  accidents  occur 
because  the  gates  of  stock  yards  are  left  open  and 
are  not  properly  fastened  back,  and  some  man 
riding  on  the  side  ladder  of  a  car  in  the  night 
time  is  struck  by  the  gate,  knocked  off  and  injured. 
This  is  a  matter  which  agents,  trainmasters  and 
section  men  should  look  after ;  they  should  see  that 
this  practice  of  leaving  gates  open  and  unfastened 
is  stopped. 

Now,  about  these  obstructions  that  are  along  the 
road,  that  are  all  over  the  road.  We  had  a  case 
up  in  Michigan  the  other  day  of  a  brakeman  who 
lost  both  of  his  legs.  How  did  it  happen?  He 
tried  to  get  on  an  engine  in  the  night  time  and  was 
knocked  off  by  the  platform  of  an  old  coal  shed 
that  had  practically  not  been  used  for  three  years. 
It  cost  a  pair  of  legs  to  get  that  platform  moved. 
The  man  who  was  to  blame  for  leaving  the  plat- 
form there  is  the  man  who  should  have  lost  his 
legs,  but  as  I  said  before,  it  never  happens  that  way, 
and  that  boy,  who  got  on  the  engine  on  the  wrong 
side,  must  go  through  life  with  both  legs  gone 
because  some  road  master  or  section  foreman  or 
bridgeman  did  not  move  or  tear  down  that  plat- 

53 


form  in  an  old  shed.  There  is  absolutely  no  excuse 
for  that  kind  of  an  accident,  absolutely  no  reason 
why  they  should  occur.  I  found  the  same  condi- 
tions existing  at  Waseca.    It  is  changed  now. 

A  class  of  accidents  occurring  at  many  points 
on  the  system,  especially  on  the  branch  lines,  is  in- 
juries to  children  playing  on  unlocked  turn-tables. 
Rule  No.  857  requires  that  turn-tables  should  be 
locked.  Quite  frequently  these  turn-tables  are  lo- 
cated at  points  adjacent  to  the  highways,  and  we  all 
know  how  a  child  likes  to  get  on  and  oif  anything 
that  moves,  and  these  unlocked  tables  are  simply  an 
invitation  for  them  to  do  so.  The  last  bad  accident 
occurred  up  in  Minnesota,  a  boy  seven  or  eight 
years  old  came  along  with  some  school  companions 
and  got  on  the  table.  He  fell,  was  caught  between 
the  table  and  the  wall  of  the  pit  and  lost  one  leg  at 
the  hip,  the  other  was  broken  in  three  places.  The 
child  was  the  son  of  a  prominent  man  in  the  place. 
His  mother  was  killed  by  the  shock,  and  the  child  is 
a  permanent  cripple.  Think  how  you  would  feel, 
or  how  I  would  feel,  if  our  child,  or  our  grandchild 
had  been  injured  in  that  way  through  the  careless- 
ness or  thoughtlessness  of  some  one  in  failing  to 
lock  the  turn-table.  All  you  have  to  do  is  to  put 
the  lock  on,  it  fastens  itself.  Why  not  do  it  and 
prevent  such  accidents,  and  remember  the  accident 
is  quite  likely  to  happen  to  your  child  or  the  child 
of  some  relative  or  of  some  neighbor,  and  remember 
that  it  will  take  less  time  to  prevent  the  accident 
than  to  report  it. 

The  careless  and  improper  use  of  hand  cars  and 
the  use  of  defective  hand  cars  results  in  altogether 

54 


too  many  accidents.  Rule  No.  1014  requires  red 
lights  on  a  hand  car  which  is  moving  after  dark, 
and  yet  we  all  know  that  hand  cars  are  used  after 
dark  with  no  lights  on  them.  We  also  know  that 
Rule  No.  1013  requires  that  hand  cars  shall  be  kept 
three  hundred  feet  apart  when  they  are  moving,  and 
yet  every  little  while  we  have  an  accident  and  a  man 
is  injured  in  a  collision  between  hand  cars.  These 
accidents  never  happen  when  the  men  are  going 
out  to  work  in  the  morning  but  always  when  they 
are  in  a  hurry  coming  home  and  race  to  get  back. 
Why  not  enforce  the  rule  and  stop  them. 

The  same  rule,  No.  1013,  prohibits  outsiders  or 
employes  from  using  hand  cars  except  in  the  serv- 
ice of  the  Company.  On  some  parts  of  the  system 
it  seems  as  though  very  little  attention  was  paid  to 
this  rule,  and  very  frequently  section  foremen  allow 
outsiders  to  use  the  hand  cars  as  an  accommodation 
and  because  they  are  the  most  accessible  and  con- 
venient mode  of  transportation.  The  last  accident 
to  occur  from  breaking  this  rule  was  in  Wisconsin, 
and  resulted  in  the  death  of  four  people  and  injury 
to  two  or  three  more.  Why  not  enforce  this  rule 
and  prevent  such  accidents  in  the  future. 

One  of  the  most  important  rules  in  the  book  is 
the  flag  rule.  No.  99.  This  a  rule  with  which 
every  train  and  engine  man  ought  to  be  fa- 
miliar and  which  should  be  complied  with  liter- 
ally. If  this  had  been  done,  the  collision  which 
occurred  near  Rawson  some  time  ago  would  not 
have  happened.  Many  of  you  will  remember  the 
case  where  train  No.  282  was  stalled  in  the  snow 
on  the  main  track  about  three  miles  south  of  the 


55 


station.  The  conductor  and  engine  crew  uncoupled 
the  engine  and  ran  to  Bain  for  assistance  and  the 
hind  brakeman  was  told  to  go  out  and  flag.  He 
went  back  a  short  distance,  less  than  one  thousand 
feet,  claims  to  have  put  down  a  couple  of  torpedoes 
and  lit  some  fusees,  and  then  instead  of  going  back 
three-quarters  of  a  mile  or  twenty-four  telegraph 
poles  with  his  red  lights,  to  protect  his  train  and 
stop  any  on-coming  train,  went  back  to  the  caboose 
and  the  engine  of  a  south-bound  train  came  on  in 
the  storm,  found  no  torpedoes  or  fusees,  and  the 
collision  occurred,  in  which  the  brakeman  who 
should  have  been  out  flagging,  was  injured.  Think 
how  much  better  it  would  have  been  for  this  brake- 
man  to  have  stayed  out  in  the  snow  and  cold  for 
half  or  three-quarters  of  an  hour  or  all  night  if 
necessary,  as  required  by  the  rule  he  agreed  to 
observe  when  he  entered  the  service,  instead  of 
going  back  to  a  warm  caboose,  thereby  allowing 
another  train  to  run  into  his  train,  in  which  collision 
he  was  crippled  for  life,  to  say  nothing  of  other 
employes  who  were  injured  in  the  same  wreck 
brought  about  by  his  carelessness.  I  call  attention 
to  this  particular  case  to  illustrate  the  necessity  of 
a  strict  compliance  with  the  provisions  of  that 
rule  whether  on  the  head  end  or  hind  end  of  a 
train;  and  every  man  who  fails  to  comply  with  it, 
should  be  dismissed  from  the  service  because  he 
not  only  endangers  his  own  life  but  the  lives  of 
others  and  if  he  is  unwilling  to  comply  Vv'ith  so 
important  a  rule,  he  is  not  safe  to  have  in  the 
service  in  any  capacity.  Only  the  other  night  I  was 
on  a  fast  passenger  train  which  was  delayed  by  a 

60 


hot  box;  the  flagman  went  back  but  a  short  dis- 
tance, less  than  half  that  required  by  the  rule,  and 
was  very  much  surprised  because  the  conductor, 
who  was  not  the  regular  one  for  that  train,  gave 
him  to  understand  that  he  wouldn't  tolerate  such 
work  in  the  future,  which  the  regular  man  was 
evidently  allowing  to  pass  unnoticed. 

Rule  809  prohibits  the  switching  of  cars  on 
loading  or  unloading  tracks  without  the  man  in 
charge  of  the  switching  investigating  to  see  whether 
there  is  any  one  in  the  cars  unloading  freight,  and 
giving  notice  of  the  fact  that  the  cars  are  to  be 
moved.  The  accidents  occurring  from  a  disregard 
of  this  rule  are  increasing  every  year.  Sometimes 
it  is  an  employe,  sometimes  an  outsider  who  is  in- 
jured as  freight  is  being  unloaded  or  loaded.  If 
you  would  only  remember  that  you  should  go  down 
past  all  of  the  cars  and  notify  every  one  in  them 
that  you  are  about  to  make  a  switch,  and  if  you 
would  also  remember  that  it  is  better  to  cause  a 
delay  than  an  accident,  and  that  it  will  take  less  time 
to  prevent  such  an  accident  than  to  make  a  report  of 
it,  many  of  these  injuries  would  be  prevented.  The 
same  kind  of  carelessness  results  in  injuries  to  oc- 
cupants of  cars  loaded  with  emigrant  movables, 
when  the  cars  are  kicked  around  in  switching.  Such 
a  car  should  never  be  switched  unless  the  engine  is 
coupled  to  it,  and  without  notice  being  given  to  the 
occupant  of  the  car  as  per  Rule  102b. 

We  have  recently  had  two  highway  crossing 
accidents,  which  happened  almost  the  same  way. 
One  occurred  in  Iowa,  the  other  in  Illinois.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  both  of  them  could  have  been 


avoided  by  care  on  the  part  of  the  trainmen.  On 
both  occasions  two  or  three  trains  stood  on  either 
side  of  the  highway  crossing  waiting  for  a  fast 
train  to  go  by.  The  smoke  and  steam  from  the 
standing  engines  was  blowing  over  the  track  and 
the  view  of  the  people  in  the  wagon,  who  were 
killed  and  injured,  was  thereby  obstructed.  A  fast 
train  came  along  and  struck  them.  In  both  instances 
there  were  eight  or  ten  employes  standing  around 
the  crossings  doing  nothing.  The  slightest  care 
on  their  part  in  the  way  of  giving  notice  of  the 
approaching  train  to  the  people  who  were  about  to 
cross  the  track,  would  have  prevented  the  accidents. 
Probably  these  men  would  have  given  the  warning 
if  they  had  thought;  in  so  many  of  these  cases  it 
is  thoughtlessness  which  brings  about  serious  in- 
juries. Every  time  anyone  is  struck  and  injured  or 
killed  on  a  highway  crossing  it  is  claimed  that  the 
whistle  was  not  sounded  for  the  crossing  or  the 
bell  was  not  rung  as  is  required  by  Rule  31.  You 
men  always  claim  that  the  whistle  was  blown  and 
the  bell  rung.  Several  times  I  have  personally  in- 
vestigated this  matter,  insisting  beforehand  that  the 
bell  was  rung  and  the  whistle  sounded,  and  some 
one  would  say,  "now  watch  this  train  coming." 
The  train  would  come  along  without  blowing  the 
whistle  or  ringing  the  bell  for  the  crossing.  This 
happened  with  two  trains  I  was  watching  while  at 
a  house  in  the  country,  and  you  can  imagine 
whether  or  not  I  felt  like  thirty  cents.  It  is  im- 
portant that  the  whistle  should  be  sounded  and  the 
bell  rung  at  the  whistling  post  and  every  engineer 
should  comply  with  the  rule,  not  by  giving  one 

58 


short  toot,  but  by  giving  the  four  whistles  required 
by  the  rule.  Only  a  few  days  ago  my  wife  was 
nearly  caught  in  driving  over  a  crossing,  but  no 
whistle  was  sounded  or  bell  rung  until  just  as  the 
engine  got  on  the  crossing,  and  then  only  one  toot 
instead  of  four  was  given. 

Another  class  of  highway  accidents  it  seems  to 
me  could  be  avoided  by  a  little  care,  is  that  of  peo- 
ple who  come  up  on  the  highway  from  the  fireman's 
side  of  the  engine.  The  fireman  sees  the  person 
coming,  sees  that  they  do  not  notice  the  trains  ap- 
proaching, and  yet  fails  to  tell  the  engineer.  The 
result  is  an  accident.  We  had  an  old  lady  injured  in 
this  way  at  Watertown  the  other  day.  A  little  fore- 
thought on  the  part  of  the  fireman  would  have  pre- 
vented the  accident,  and  it  would  have  taken  him 
less  time  to  tell  the  engineer  than  to  make  a  report. 
It  also  would  have  saved  making  a  cripple  of  this 
old  lady. 

There  is  another  class  of  crossing  accidents 
which  is  comparatively  new  and  which,  I  think, 
could  also  be  avoided.  These  are  caused  by  the 
obstruction  of  crossings,  especially  by  flat  cars  in 
trains  without  a  light  on  them  at  night  and  no  one 
stationed  at  the  crossing  to  prevent  teams  or  auto- 
mobiles from  running  into  them.  Ordinarily  a 
man's  vision  is  above  a  flat  car,  and  if  he  sees  cars 
standing  on  either  side  of  the  track  it  would  not 
occur  to  him  that  there  probably  was  a  flat  car 
standing  between  them  right  over  the  highway.  It 
would  be  easy  enough  to  station  a  man  at  the  high- 
way to  give  warning  that  the  crossing  is  obstructed, 
or  to  put  a  red  light  on  the  car,  and  if  this  had  been 

59 


done,  three  accidents  (two  to  automobiles  and  one 
to  a  man  driving  a  team)  would  have  been  avoided. 

Another  case  which  seems  to  be  absolutely  in- 
excusable was  of  a  m.an  who  was  struck  and 
killed  by  an  engine  hauling  a  passenger  train  in 
the  night  time.  No  one  on  the  engine  knew  that 
the  accident  had  occurred.  The  same  engineer  went 
out  in  the  morning  after  daylight  and  ran  over  the 
body  of  the  man  killed  and  even  then  did  not  dis- 
cover it.  Possibly  some  of  you  can  tell  me  or  imag- 
ine some  excuse  I  can  make  to  families  of  men  who 
have  been  killed  in  this  way. 

These  are  the  kind  of  things  I  have  to  explain 
to  people;  and  yet,  we  have  many  of  these  acci- 
dents. Many  of  them  are  excusable;  they  happen 
in  the  night  time;  the  people  are  on  the  tracks 
where  they  had  no  right  to  be,  where  the  engineer 
and  fireman  don't  see  them,  and  the  train  is  going 
forty  or  fifty  miles  an  hour  and  he  is  not  expected 
to  see  everything,  but  sometimes,  on  a  perfectly 
straight  track,  in  broad  daylight,  an  accident  occurs 
to  a  man  walking  on  the  track  and  the  engineer  says 
that  he  was  keeping  watch  every  minute  and  didn't 
see  the  man,  strange  that  he  should  strike  and  kill  a 
man  under  such  circumstances  and  not  know  it. 
And  when  he  tells  you  he  was  looking  out  all  the 
time  you  know  he  lies ;  you  know  absolutely  that  he 
lies,  because  it  could  not  happen  in  that  way  and  he 
not  know  it.  If  a  man  comes  up  to  a  highway  cross- 
ing in  broad  daylight  where  there  is  no  obstruction 
to  prevent  his  seeing  a  train,  and  gets  hit  by  the  en- 
gine, and  says  he  looked  and  did  not  see  the  engine, 
you  know  he  lied,  because  if  he  had  looked  he  must 


have  seen  it ;  it  would  have  been  a  physical  impossi- 
bility for  him  not  to  see  it.  It  is  just  the  same  with 
the  man  on  the  engine.  It  is  a  rule  the  courts  have 
applied  all  over  the  country,  that  if  a  man  comes  up 
on  a  highway  crossing  in  broad  daylight  and  there  is 
a  train  coming  and  no  obstruction,  he  must  see  it, 
and  if  he  does  not  see  it  he  is  careless.  They  apply 
that  same  rule  to  us,  to  a  man  running  the  engine. 
If  he  strikes  someone  in  broad  daylight  and  says 
he  was  looking  out,  they  say  he  must  have  seen  it, 
he  could  not  help  but  see  it  if  he  had  looked. 
Many  times  the  engineer  is  doing  something  in  the 
cab  that  he  ought  to  do,  something  that  is  perfectly 
proper  for  him  to  do,  and  his  attention  is  momen- 
tarily distracted  from  the  track,  but  he  won't  say 
so;  for  some  reason  he  thinks  he  must  make  it 
appear  he  is  watching  the  rails  every  minute,  and 
the  result  is  he  makes  out  that  he  is  a  damned 
liar,  too  careless  or  incompetent  to  be  on  the  engine. 
He  puts  the  Company  in  the  hole  just  because  he 
doesn't  tell  the  truth.  Now,  why  not  tell  th*-  truth ; 
we  want  the  truth  and  the  whole  truth;  we  don't 
want  you  to  lie  against  the  company,  and  we  don't 
want  you  to  lie  for  the  company. 

We  had  an  accident  the  other  day  where  a  man 
was  killed  like  that  in  the  night  time.  No  one  was 
to  blame,  and  no  one  was  accused  of  being  to 
blame.  The  man  was  lying  on  the  tracks,  on  a 
curve,  drunk,  and  the  enginemen  did  not  see  him, 
could  not  see  him,  but  what  does  Mr.  Fireman  do 
but  get  on  the  witness  stand  at  the  Coroner's  in- 
quest and  testify  that  the  headlight  was  bad  and 
that   was   the   reason    they   did   not    see  him;    he 

61 


thought  he  had  to  lay  it  to  something  or  he  would 
be  blamed.  That  happened  to  be  one  of  the  times 
when  we  had  a  good  headlight. 

Now,  these  are  the  kinds  of  accidents  that  are 
aggravating,  that  make  enemies  who  say  that  you 
people  running  trains  are  inhuman,  that  you  have 
no  regard  for  human  life.  They  don't  blame  me 
for  it,  they  blame  you.  You  don't  hear  so  much 
about  it,  they  don't  tell  you,  they  come  and  tell 
me,  and  the  things  that  are  said  about  railroad  men 
causing  these  accidents  are  pretty  nearly  as  bad  as 
the  things  they  say  about  claim  agents,  and  they 
are  the  limit. 

Greater  care  should  be  taken  to  close  vestibules 
on  the  through  trains.  There  seems  to  be  but  little 
complaint  as  regards  keeping  vestibules  closed  on 
the  standard  sleepers,  but  there  is  cause  for  a  great 
deal  of  complaint  in  the  way  these  vestibules  are 
left  open  on  tourist  cars  and  on  coaches,  especially 
at  the  end  of  trains.  Conductors  and  brakemen 
should  exercise  greater  care  in  regard  to  this,  and 
see  that  the  vestibules  are  kept  closed  as  required 
by  Rule  769.  It  is  very  easy  for  a  man  to  come  out 
of  a  lighted  car  in  the  night  time  and  fall  off  the 
car  if  the  vestibule  is  open,  and  he  expects  to  find 
it  closed  and  acts  accordingly. 

The  same  sort  of  heedlessness  resulted  in  an  in- 
excusable and  annoying  accident  the  other  day.  A 
fireman  undertook  to  wet  down  the  coal  with  hot 
water  from  the  injector.  The  car  next  to  the  engine 
was  loaded  with  passengers,  the  door  was  open  and 
the  hot  water  and  coal  soot  went  over  the  passen- 
gers in  the  car.  Fortunately  no  one  was  scalded  or 
injured. 


Injuries  to  section  men  who  are  working  on  the 
track  in  the  busy  terminals  or  at  curves  are  fre- 
quently brought  about  because  no  one  is  stationed 
to  watch  for  approaching  trains  and  warn  the  work- 
men of  their  approach.  We  had  an  accident  of  that 
kind  in  the  Chicago  terminals  recently,  at  a  curve 
where  a  man  had  been  assigned  the  duty  of  picking 
up  stone  which  had  been  dropped  on  the  track.  The 
rest  of  the  men  were  working  on  the  other  side  of 
the  work-train.  A  passenger  train  coming  along 
struck  and  killed  the  section  man.  He  did  not  see 
the  train  coming  and  the  men  on  the  engine  could 
not  see  him  in  time  to  stop.  The  man's  life  would 
have  been  saved  if  the  foreman  of  the  gang  had 
taken  the  care  to  station  some  one  to  watch  for  the 
approaching  train.  This  precaution  is  especially 
necessary  when  it  is  snowing  or  storming. 

We  have  a  rule,  Rule  No.  761,  which  tells  the 
manner  in  which  brakemen  should  announce  stations. 
Now,  I  ride  on  trains  perhaps  as  much  as  any  one, 
and  when  I  am  at  home  I  ride  on  the  same  train 
every  day.  I  have  never  known  that  rule  to  be 
complied  with.  The  rule  says  that  the  brakeman 
shall  go  into  the  car,  facing  the  passengers  and  an- 
nounce the  station  twice.  Why  don't  you  conduct- 
ors make  them  do  it?  That  is  one  of  the  things  you 
are  paid  to  do.  When  I  ride  on  another  railroad 
every  time  a  brakeman  comes  in  he  talks  in  French 
or  Latin,  or  if  he  talks  English  he  talks  to  himself. 
I  ask  the  man  in  front  of  me  what  station  is  being 
called,  and  I  am  told  that  he  doesn't  know,  and  then 
I  have  to  go  and  ask  the  conductor.  It  is  just  the 
same  way  with  people  riding  on  our  trains.     It  is 


very  annoying,  and  every  time  we  annoy  a  passen- 
ger he  says  to  himself:  "If  there  is  another  rail- 
road in  town  I  won't  ride  on  the  North  Western 
again." 

Many  people  are  injured  getting  off  the  train. 
Generally  they  are  old  people  who  are  unaccustomed 
to  traveling.  They  don't  know  where  the  station  is, 
and  they  are  slow  in  getting  off,  and  the  brakeman 
isn't  careful.  Sometimes  the  train  starts  as  they 
come  out  of  the  door,  and  the  old  man  and  woman, 
and  it  might  be  your  father  and  mother  or  my 
father  and  mother,  come  down  the  steps  and  get 
off  with  the  train  moving  because  they  don't  want 
to  be  carried  by,  and  so  they  get  hurt.  I  am  sure 
you  take  plenty  of  time  to  get  the  young  and  good 
looking  girls  off  the  train.  If  you  brakemen  would 
always  remember  that  it  is  better  to  cause  a  delay 
than  to  cause  an  accident,  accidents  of  this  kind 
would  never  occur.  When  a  train  is  being  pulled 
up  to  a  station  at  which  the  engine  is  to  take  water, 
don't  let  the  passengers  get  off  until  the  stop  is 
made,  and  after  the  train  has  stopped  and  the 
passengers  have  begun  to  get  on  or  off,  don't  let 
the  engineer  move  the  train  for  the  purpose  of  tak- 
ing water  until  the  passengers  are  all  on  or  off. 
And  when  it  is  raining  stop  the  coaches  opposite  the 
shed  or  awning  so  that  your  passengers  won't  get 
wet  in  getting  from  the  train  to  the  station.  When 
you  are  receiving  passengers  on  freight  trains,  the 
caboose  should  be  pulled  up  to  the  platform  so  they 
can  get  on  and  off  in  safety,  as  required  by  Rule  io6, 
and  don't  start  your  train  until  they  get  a  seat,  be- 
cause if  you  do,  in  taking  up  the  slack,  some  one  is 
sure  to  be  thrown  down. 

64 


When  you  conductors  have  occasion  to  eject  a 
passenger  from  a  train  because  of  non-payment  of 
fare  or  for  some  other  reason,  don't  do  it  at  any 
place  other  than  an  open  station.  Rule  No.  767  pro- 
vides how  it  shall  be  done,  and  when  you  do,  make 
a  report  on  Form  No.  992. 

We  have  a  rule,  No.  105,  about  passing  trains 
at  stations  on  the  double  track.  A  train  shall  not 
come  into  a  station  where  another  train  is  standing 
loading  or  unloading  passengers  until  such  train  has 
started  and  the  last  car  has  passed  beyond  the  plat- 
form. We  had  one  of  those  terrible  accidents  the 
other  night  on  the  Iowa  Division.  Two  nice  old 
farmer  people,  husband  and  wife,  about  seventy  or 
seventy-one  years  old,  were  coming  from  Nebraska 
to  Mount  Vernon  on  a  visit.  They  got  off  at  Mount 
Vernon  in  the  middle  of  the  night  at  the  platform 
away  from  the  station.  The  fast  mail,  No.  9,  was 
due  from  the  east  when  the  trainmen  on  No.  16 
helped  those  two  old  strangers  off  onto  the  platform 
away  from  the  station  and  left  them.  No.  9  could 
be  heard  coming,  you  know  the  noise  that  fast  mail 
makes,  and  the  trainmen  did  nothing  to  protect 
those  old  people,  and  as  soon  as  No.  16  left  they 
started  to  wander  over  the  tracks  to  the  station. 
The  fast  mail  came  along  and  you  know  what  hap- 
pened. There  was  a  double  funeral  in  that  town 
the  next  day.  Think  of  a  man  being  allowed  to  run 
a  passenger  train,  who  has  no  more  regard  for 
human  life  than  to  leave  two  helpless  old  people  to 
be  killed  in  that  way.  It  would  actually  have  taken 
less  time  for  that  crew  on  No.  16  to  stay  and  look 
after  those  old  people  than  it  did  to  make  a  report 

G5 


of  the  accident,  and  how  much  better  it  would  have 
been  in  this  instance  to  cause  a  little  delay  to  No.  i6 
than  to  have  caused  this  terrible  accident.  And  that 
rule,  No.  105,  is  disregarded  every  day.  You  men 
and  you  superintendents  know  it  and  it  is  high  time 
that  you  all  commenced  to  comply  with  its  letter  and 
its  spirit  and  put  an  end  to  such  accidents.  These  are 
the  kinds  of  accidents  which  make  newspapers  say 
of  us  that  we  are  heartless  and  don't  care  whether 
we  kill  people  or  not,  that  it  is  cheaper  to  kill  peo- 
ple than  to  injure  them.  There  never  were  state- 
ments more  untrue.  Every  one  knows,  who  has 
had  any  experience  at  all,  that  it  costs  ten  times  as 
much  to  settle  death  losses  than  it  does  to  settle  in- 
jury losses,  and  yet,  that  is  the  kind  of  talk  you  will 
see  in  the  papers. 

We  had  an  accident  the  other  day  on  the  eleva- 
tion on  the  Galena  Division,  as  the  shop  train  was 
coming  in.  You  know  the  kind  of  men  who  ride 
on  shop  trains, — a  lot  of  them  ignorant,  a  lot  of 
them  who  don't  understand  English,  or  danger. 
There  is  a  place  where  the  train  had  to  stop  before 
it  crossed  to  another  track,  because  Pat  O'Brien 
wanted  to  save  human  life  and  prevent  an  acci- 
dent such  as  the  one  we  had  at  Rogers  Park  last 
winter,  when  the  Milwaukee  passenger,  running 
fifty  or  sixty  miles  an  hour  tried  to  cross  from  one 
track  to  another  and  went  into  the  ditch.  So  this 
train  was  stopped  before  crossing  over.  Some  of 
the  men  on  the  shop  train  lived  in  that  vicinity  and 
they  piled  off  the  train  like  a  flock  of  sheep.  The 
Aurora  train  came  along  and  you  know  what  hap- 
pened.   We  should  remember  that  the  men  on  shop 


trains  have  neither  the  intelligence  or  the  under- 
standing of  the  risks  of  a  railroad  that  the  rest  of 
us  have,  and  when  such  a  train  comes  to  a  stop  the 
thing  for  the  man  on  the  head  end  of  the  approach- 
ing train  to  do  is  to  stop  and  let  them  all  get  over 
the  tracks.  Of  course,  those  men  should  not  get 
off  there,  but  then  we  know  they  just  will  do  it  and 
we  must  act  accordingly,  and  remember  that  it  is 
better  to  cause  a  delay  than  an  accident. 

Still  another  class  of  accidents  which  occur,  not 
only  with  us  but  with  other  railroads,  is  brought 
about  by  the  assignment  of  inexperienced  men  to  im- 
portant or  hazardous  service.  We  have  had  several 
collisions  of  passenger  trains  on  this  road  during 
the  last  ten  years,  resulting  in  serious  loss  of  life 
and  many  injuries.  Upon  investigation  it  was  found 
that  the  engineers  in  charge  of  the  trains  had  prac- 
tically no  experience  in  the  running  of  a  passenger 
train.  Every  superintendent  and  train  dispatcher 
and  every  other  division  officer  who  has  the  assign- 
ment of  conductors  or  engineers  to  passenger,  ex- 
cursion or  special  trains,  ought  to  have  a  list  of 
such  engineers  and  conductors  as  are  eligible  to 
such  service  and  immediate  notice  should  be  given 
them  of  such  changes  as  occur  from  promotion, 
suspension  or  natural  causes  so  that  the  list  would 
always  be  accurate  and  up  to  date.  If  this  had 
been  done,  an  engineer  who  was  not  eligible  to  such 
service  would  not  twice  within  three  months  have 
been  assigned  to  such  trains  by  the  train  dispatcher, 
the  last  time  resulting  in  the  collision  of  two  pas- 
senger trains. 

In  another  case,  a  boy  sixteen  years  old,  the 
only  son  of  a  widowed  mother,  was  employed  as  a 

67 


messenger  in  a  freight  house.  He  was  sent  out  in 
the  yards  to  tack  cards  on  a  car  with  no  instructions 
given  him  as  to  the  care  to  be  exercised.  The  car 
he  was  putting  the  card  on  stood  on  a  track  ad- 
jacent to  the  main  track  of  another  railroad.  A  fast 
train  came  along,  struck  and  killed  him,  and  now 
there  is  another  little  grave  in  the  cemetery  and 
another  mother  mourning  the  loss  of  a  son.  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  slightest  forethought  or  care 
on  the  part  of  the  agent  directing  this  work,  would 
have  prevented  this  accident,  and  if  he  had  to  come 
in  contact  with  the  mother  of  the  boy  who  was 
killed,  as  I  had  to,  he  certainly  never  would  let  it 
happen  again. 

This  matter  of  safety  is  the  most  important 
thing  on  a  railroad;  safety  before  anything  else  is 
what  is  wanted,  and  if  we  could  get  it,  how  much 
better  it  would  be  for  us  all.  Suppose  we  could 
get  the  reputation  of  killing  and  injuring  fewer 
people  than  the  Milwaukee  or  the  Burlington  or  the 
Illinois  Central — than  any  of  these  roads.  The  re- 
sult would  be  that  we  would  get  all  the  best  men 
from  the  other  roads,  everybody  would  want  to 
send  stuff  over  a  safe  road,  everybody  would  want 
to  travel  over  the  safe  road,  in  fact,  everybody 
Tvould  use  our  road  and  that  would  make  more 
work  for  everybody  except  me,  and  I  would  like 
to  draw  my  salary  without  working  for  it  before  I 
am  pensioned. 

We  must  have  safety  and  regularity,  and  in 
order  to  have  these  we  must  have  co-operation. 
Let  the  example  of  the  older  men  in  the  service  be 
an  influence,  a  guide  to  bring  the  younger  men  up 


to  the  right  standard,  thereby  decreasing  the  risk  of 
death  and  injury  for  all,  and  at  the  same  time  in- 
creasing the  efficiency  of  the  organization  for  which 
we  are  working. 

The  safety  committees  to  be  appointed  on  all  the 
Divisions  will  be  the  means  of  accomplishing  great 
good.  There  are  many  things  happening  every  day 
which  could  and  should  be  prevented,  which  can  be 
prevented  at  the  expense  of  a  very  little  care,  a  very 
little  time  on  your  part,  and  we  want  you  to  prevent 
them ;  we  want  you  to  prevent  the  thousands  of  little 
things  which  account  for  the  eighty-six  hundred  and 
twenty-six  men  killed  and  injured  on  the  North 
Western  Railroad  last  year.  Why  not  begin 
these  reforms  today?  Explain  to  the  younger  men 
the  risks  of  the  service,  and  what  will  happen  if 
they  don't  comply  with  the  rules.  When  I  was  a 
little  fellow  running  about  the  yards  in  Chicago 
(the  road  was  small  then),  I  knew  nearly  all  the 
train  men  that  came  to  the  city.  Do  you  know 
what  I  heard  them  talking  about  in  the  cabooses, 
dog-houses,  round  houses  and  switch  shanties? 
They  were  talking  about  the  rules,  getting  up  hypo- 
thetical cases  and  arguing  them.  They  were  telling 
about  the  good  engineer  they  had,  and  what  a  good 
run  they  had  made.  What  do  I  hear  now,  what  do 
we  all  hear?  It  isn't  talk  about  rules,  or  good  men 
or  good  runs,  it  is  talk  about  that  blankety  blank 
time-keeper  that  didn't  give  that  extra  twenty-five 
miles,  of  the  thirty  cents  short  in  pay.  You  should 
have  your  pay,  and  all  your  schedule  calls  for,  but 
don't  spend  valuable  time  in  small  complaining. 
Talk  about  the  rules  and  get  them  fixed  in  your 


minds.  Talk  about  the  accidents  which  happen 
every  day  and  the  cause  of  them.  We  should  all 
do  our  part  to  disseminate  this  knowledge  so  that 
when  accidents  occur  from  causes  which  can  be 
prevented,  we  will  all  know  about  it.  The  Com- 
pany is  just  as  much  to  blame  as  you  are,  but 
we  are  all  going  to  do  our  share  toward  remedy- 
ing these  evils,  toward  stopping  this  awful  waste 
of  human  life.  If  these  accidents  keep  on  grow- 
ing at  the  rate  they  have  been  growing  for  the 
past  twelve  months,  if  they  increase  at  the  rate  of 
thirty-five  per  cent  in  deaths  to  employes  and 
twenty-eight  per  cent  in  injuries,  we  will  not  be 
able  to  induce  a  decent  man  to  go  into  the  service. 
It  will  be  too  dangerous.  You  must  try  to  help  in 
bringing  about  a  reduction  of  these  accidents;  re- 
member that  it  will  not  only  decrease  the  risk  to  you 
men,  but  it  will  increase  the  efficiency  of  the  road, 
it  will  get  trains  over  the  road  quicker,  and  when 
you  have  a  date  down  at  Green  Bay  or  up  at  Ish- 
peming  with  some  girl  you  want  to  marry,  every- 
thing will  go  all  right  because  you  will  all  be  work- 
ing together  and  you  will  get  in  on  time.  That  is 
what  we  all  want  to  do,  we  all  have  those  dates. 

Remember  that  it  is  the  little  things  you  must 
take  care  of,  the  little  neglects  which  happen  every 
day  and  which  bring  about  these  accidents.  You 
know  the  old  ditty. 

"Little  drops  of  water. 
Little  grains  of  sand. 
Make  the  mighty  ocean, 
And  a  beauteous  land." 

70 


So  it  is  with  these  little  accidents.  Little  acci- 
dents which  are  caused  by  defective  cars ;  little  acci- 
dents caused  by  defective  engines;  little  accidents 
caused  by  unblocked  frogs  and  guard-rails;  little 
accidents  caused  by  defective  hand  cars  and  by  rac- 
ing hand  cars ;  little  accidents  caused  by  carelessness 
or  thoughtlessness.  It  is  the  accidents  caused  by 
leaving  material  too  close  to  the  tracks,  accidents 
caused  by  agents  leaving  stuff  on  platforms,  con- 
trary to  Rule  736,  and  freight  men  unloading  and 
leaving  freight  on  the  edge  of  platforms,  that  some 
fellow  on  the  next  train  may  fall  over,  or  some  pas- 
senger may  fall  over  it  because  the  agent  has  also 
forgotten  to  light  his  lamps.  These  are  the  little, 
every-day  things  which  cause  accidents  enough  to 
make  eighty-six  hundred  injuries  and  one  hundred 
and  seven  deaths  to  employes. 

Now  I  want  to  say  a  word  to  you  agents  and 
operators  about  giving  information.  As  an  ex- 
ample I  will  give  you  a  little  experience  of  my 
own.  A  friend  of  mine,  a  man  who  might  be 
called  one  of  the  most  distinguished  men  in  the 
state,  was  coming  to  take  breakfast  with  me  at 
Geneva  Sunday  morning.  He  is  the  bishop  of  a 
church,  is  one  of  the  best  speakers  and  best  talkers 
I  ever  heard,  and  if  I  had  even  a  part  of  his  elo- 
quence I  could  convince  you  men  right  now  of  the 
necessity  of  these  reforms.  Well,  I  wanted  to  go 
to  the  station  with  the  carriage  to  meet  the  Bishop, 
and  I  telephoned  to  find  out  how  the  train  was; 
it  was  due  at  seven  o'clock.  They  said  it  was  on 
time.    When  I  got  down  there  it  was  not  in  sight 

71 


and  I  asked  "Where  is  No.  i6?"  Then  they  said  it 
was  an  hour  late.  I  was  sore  and  said,  "Why  the 
hell  didn't  you  tell  me  so  when  I  asked  you  ?"  They 
said  they  thought  it  was  on  time  when  I  telephoned. 
I  asked,  "What  is  the  next  train  which  comes  over 
from  Sycamore  and  what  time  will  it  be  here?" 
They  said,  "At  seven-fifty-eight."  I  live  only  five 
minutes  from  the  station  and  thought  I  would  rather 
wait  an  hour  at  home  so  I  went  back  there  and  while 
I  was  waiting,  in  walks  the  Bishop,  and  perhaps 
thirty  cents  wouldn't  have  been  a  fortune  to  me  just 
then!  That  train  got  there  at  seven-twenty-eight, 
then  went  up  to  St.  Charles,  got  a  couple  of  cars  of 
milk,  came  back  and  left  at  seven-fifty-eight.  Now, 
if  that  sort  of  thing  is  being  handed  out  to  the 
officers  of  the  road,  what  do  you  suppose  is  being 
done  to  the  people  who  are  paying  their  fare? 
What  kind  of  information  do  you  suppose  they  get? 
That  is  the  kind  of  talk,  that  is  the  kind  of  mis- 
information that  makes  enemies  for  the  road.  An- 
other instance :  A  lady  was  going  to  California  the 
other  day,  and  she  went  out  on  No.  i.  She  wanted 
to  stay  over  at  Council  Bluffs,  so  she  left  her  trunk 
there.  The  next  day  she  went  to  the  Council  Bluffs 
station  and  asked,  "What  time  does  the  Overland 
Limited  come  in?"  They  said,  "The  train  has  just 
gone  to  Omaha."  "Is  there  any  way  I  can  catch 
the  train?"  "Yes,  you  can  get  a  hack  and  drive 
over,  the  train  stays  on  the  other  side  of  the  river 
half  an  hour."  So  she  got  a  hack  paying  ten 
dollars  for  it,  and  when  she  got  to  Omaha,  the 
train  had  not  left  Council  Bluffs.  The  baggage- 
man thought  it  had  gone;  he  didn't  know,  but  he 

72 


thought  so.  These  are  the  kind  of  things  you 
are  handing  out  to  people,  these  are  the  kind  of 
things  that  happen  every  day  on  every  railroad  in 
the  country,  to  make  enemies  for  us.  If  you  would 
pay  just  a  little  attention  to  your  business,  and  were 
onto  your  jobs,  such  things  would  not  happen.  There 
isn't  any  excuse  for  that  sort  of  a  thing ;  there  is  no 
reason  why  that  kind  of  people  should  be  in  the 
service  and  we  ought  to  get  them  out  in  order  to 
stop  such  mistakes.  It  is  this  same  kind  of  thought- 
lessness, that  "don't  care"  kind,  which  makes  the 
accidents;  just  that  same  kind  of  thoughtlessness 
and  carelessness  that  causes  eight  thousand  six 
hundred  and  twenty-six  of  you  to  be  injured  in 
twelve  months,  and  one  hundred  and  seven  of  you 
to  be  killed  in  twelve  months.  Now,  why  can't  we 
get  to  work  and  stop  this.  Why  can't  we  gain 
knowledge  from  other  people's  mistakes  and  put 
an  end  to  this  business,  and  not  go  on  and  on 
having  these  accidents,  more  than  one  every  hour  in 
the  twenty- four  hours  of  every  day  in  the  year, 
including  Sundays,  with  an  increase  of  thirty-five 
per  cent  of  employes  killed  and  twenty-eight  per 
cent  of  employes  injured.  Suppose  your  expenses 
increased  thirty-five  per  cent  and  your  salary  ten. 
Why,  if  we  have  an  increase  of  earnings  of  ten  or 
fifteen  per  cent  on  the  North  Western,  we  think  that 
is  a  wonderful  year.  And  of  course  the  accidents 
ought  not  to  increase  faster  than  the  earnings.  In- 
stead of  being  an  increase  of  over  thirty  per  cent  in 
the  number  of  accidents  there  ought  to  be  a  decrease 
of  fifty  per  cent,  and  you  people  can  bring  this 
about.  No  one  else  on  the  North  Western  Railroad 
can  do  it,  but  you  can  if  you  want  to. 

73 


And  you  agents,  especially  on  the  double  track, 
ought  to  take  better  care  of  your  passengers  to  pre- 
vent their  being  injured.  You  know  we  are  re- 
quired to  and  ought  to  exercise  the  highest  degree 
of  care  in  protecting  them  from  injury,  and  when 
you  have  passengers  waiting  at  your  station  and 
a  fast  train  is  coming  through  that  don't  stop,  don't 
sit  in  your  chairs  like  bumps  on  a  log,  but  get  out 
and  tell  the  passengers  that  the  coming  train  don't 
stop,  and  when  their  train  will  arrive,  so  that  they 
won't  race  across  the  track  in  front  of  the  on- 
coming train,  as  a  passenger  did  the  other  day 
at  Geneva  and  another  at  Park  Ridge,  with  fatal  re- 
sult, under  similar  circumstances.  It  will  take  you 
less  time  to  do  this  than  it  will  to  telegraph  your 
superintendent  of  the  accident  and  may  save  some- 
one's life. 

And  speaking  about  agents  and  stations  makes 
me  think  of  what  I  saw  at  Racine.  A  short  time 
ago  I  was  up  there  to  see  one  of  my  men  who  had 
a  shoulder  broken  in  a  runaway  accident  and  when 
I  came  down  to  the  station  at  the  Junction,  the 
first  thing  I  saw  was  the  Milwaukee's  "Be  Care- 
ful" sign  and  right  opposite  the  door  on  which  the 
sign  was  posted  were  the  unboxed  pipes  for  the 
interlocking  plant  about  six  inches  from  the  ground, 
over  which  every  passenger  had  to  step  in  coming 
to  the  station  from  the  street  car— just  where  they 
would  stumble  over  them  in  the  dark  and  break  their 
leg  or  neck — and  when  I  went  to  our  side  of  the  sta- 
tion I  found  the  pipes  boxed  but  the  boxing  in  such 
condition  as  to  make  a  regular  trap  for  any  brake- 
man  or  switchman  who  had  to  work  there,  and  I 

74 


thought  of  the  inspectors  who  have  "Eyes  and  see 
not  and  ears  and  hear  not." 

Why  can't  we  club  together?  Why  can't  we 
men  on  the  North  Western  Railroad  co-operate  in 
our  efforts  to  decrease  this  loss  of  life?  Women 
could  do  better  than  we  have  been  doing  in  the  man- 
agement of  these  things.  Think  of  having  our 
houses  kept  the  way  some  of  our  stations,  shops, 
round  houses  and  yards  are  kept !  We  wouldn't  go 
back  to  them,  and  there  would  be  a  bill  of  divorce 
right  away.  But  the  women  wouldn't  do  things 
that  way.  They  would  have  nice  thrifty  looking 
stations,  clean  round  houses  and  shops,  and  we 
wouldn't  be  ashamed  to  bring  men  from  other  roads 
to  see  them,  any  more  than  you  would  be  ashamed 
to  take  men  to  your  little  homes.  And  how  did  you 
get  these  homes,  how  did  we  all  get  them?  By  the 
habit  of  saving.  Perhaps  we  commenced  by  saving 
ten  cents  a  day,  then  twenty  cents  a  day,  and  then 
we  got  some  nice  girl  to  promise  to  marry  us  as  soon 
as  we  could  buy  the  furniture  for  the  house,  and  we 
get  busy  and  save  enough  to  buy  that  furniture. 
Then  we  pay  a  little  on  the  home  and  give  a  mort- 
gage for  the  rest,  then  save  to  pay  that,  and  pretty 
soon  we  have  money  enough  saved  to  pay  the  doctor 
for  the  baby  that  is  coming,  and  so  we  cultivate  the 
habit  of  being  thrifty.  This  is  the  kind  of  thrift  we 
want  on  the  road.  We  want  to  get  out  of  this  awful 
habit  of  being  careless  and  into  the  habit  of  being 
careful.  We  want  to  get  into  the  habit  of  protecting 
people  from  death  or  injury,  we  want  to  put  an  end 
to  the  awful  havoc  which  is  going  on. 

We  want  to  encourage  the  men  who  are  work- 
ing toward  these  reforms.    The  Company  will  give 

75 


some  sort  of  an  emblem  to  the  Division  on  the 
North  Western  Railroad  which  runs  the  safest  dur- 
ing the  next  six  months.  When  I  say  safe,  I  don't 
mean  safety  to  outsiders  or  safety  to  passengers, 
but  to  employes  of  the  Road.  The  Division  having 
the  fewest  employes  killed  or  injured  in  proportion 
to  its  train  mileage  and  in  proportion  to  the  number 
of  employes  engaged  on  the  Division,  is  the  Divis- 
ion which  will  be  given  the  emblem  or  banner,  to 
indicate  that  it  is  the  safest  Division  on  the  North 
Western  Railroad. 

Now,  if  I  worked  on  the  Peninsula  Division  I 
would  like  to  be  able  to  say  that  I  worked  not  only 
for  the  best  railroad  in  the  country,  but  on  the 
SAFEST  Division,  where  there  was  the  least  likeli- 
hood of  being  killed  or  injured.  Now  if  you  people 
want  that  banner  at  Escanaba,  as  an  emblem  that  you 
work  on  the  safest  Division  of  the  Road,  it  is  up  to 
you  to  get  it.  The  banner  will  be  as  beautiful  as 
it  can  be  made,  and  it  will  have  inscribed  on  it  in 
letters  of  green,  the  color  which,  to  us,  means 
safety,  the  words  "SAFETY,  SIMPLICITY,  and 
SUPERVISION." 

Before  closing  I  want  to  tell  you  of  a  dream  I 
had  the  other  night : 

I  dreamed  of  a  beautiful  building,  the  most  beau- 
tiful building  I  had  ever  seen.  Its  walls  were 
lined  with  books,  pictures  and  statuary,  and  its  con- 
tents were  dedicated  to  the  dissemination  of  knowl- 
edge, and  to  inculcate  a  taste  for  the  beautiful 
among  the  people  of  the  country.  I  dreamed  that 
in  every  city,  town  and  hamlet  of  this  vast  nation, 
there  was  a  similar  building  dedicated  to  this  same 


purpose.  Then  the  scenes  changed  and  I  was  back 
with  the  old  North  Western,  and  behold  we  had 
built  a  TEMPLE  OF  SAFETY  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful green  marble,  the  color  to  indicate  safety.  As 
I  approached  the  building  I  saw  over  the  entrance 
in  large  gold  letters  the  words  of  our  trade-mark, 
THE  BEST  OF  EVERYTHING,  and  above  them 
in  whitest  marble,  the  one  word,  SAFETY.  In  the 
center  of  the  building  I  found  a  commodious  room, 
and  was  told  by  the  guide,  who  was  a  one-armed 
ex-conductor,  that  it  was  used  as  a  meeting  room  of 
the  GENERAL  COMMITTEE  OF  SAFETY  of 
the  various  Divisions,  the  yards,  shops,  tracks, 
round  houses  and  freight  houses.  Around  this 
large  central  room  were  seventeen  smaller  rooms, 
one  for  each  Division  of  the  system.  The  walls  and 
floors  of  these  rooms  were  made  of  the  whitest 
marble  and  tile  and  on  the  walls  were  pictures  of 
some  of  the  railroad  heroes  who  had  given  their 
lives  in  protecting  the  lives  and  property  entrusted 
to  them.  There  were  pictures  of  some  of  the  great 
men  who  had  made  this  enterprise  successful,  and 
there  were  pictures  of  engines,  cars,  tracks  and 
bridges,  and  a  picture  of  our  grand  new  passenger 
station,  and  there  were  emblems  of  our  trade  and 
the  insignia  of  our  orders  and  brotherhoods.  One 
of  the  rooms  into  which  I  wandered  was  a  little 
larger,  a  little  finer,  a  little  handsomer  than  the 
others  and  in  it  was  a  banner  of  the  finest  gold,  on 
it  in  large  letters  made  of  emeralds  was  the  word 
SAFETY,  and  I  was  told  that  the  room  was  as- 
signed to  the  Division  of  the  North  Western  Rail- 
road which  had  the  fewest  accidents  in  proportion 

77 


to  the  number  of  employes  and  train  mileage.  Over 
the  door  of  this  room  was  the  name  of  the  Division 
occupying  it.  The  guide  told  me  that  every  Division 
headquarters  had  a  similar  building  of  smaller 
proportions,  and  that  the  men  of  the  Division  gath- 
ered there  to  hold  meetings  of  their  local  safety 
committees,  and  to  discuss  methods  of  safe  opera- 
tion, and  the  saving  of  human  lives.  All  of  these 
buildings  were  dedicated  to  the  conservation  of  men. 
That  in  the  year  19 lo  the  North  Western  men  had 
awakened  to  a  realization  of  the  fact  that  too  many 
human  beings  were  being  sacrificed  through  the 
thoughtlessness  and  carelessness  in  their  methods, 
and  as  a  result  following  this  awakening  only  one 
employe  is  killed  and  injured  where  there  had  pre- 
viously been  four  or  five.  And  that  in  commemora- 
tion of  their  success  in  making  their  road  the  safest 
in  the  world,  these  buildings  had  been  erected.  I 
pray  God  that  all,  or  a  part,  of  the  dream  may  come 
true. 


Appendix 


APPENDIX 

The   following  are  the  rules  referred  to  in  the 
foregoing  address 


IN     CASE    OF    DOUBT     ADOPT     THE     SAFE  No.  i 
COURSE,  SPEED  MUST  ALWAYS  BE  SACRIFICED 
FOR  SAFETY. 

A  blue  flag  by  day  and  a  blue  light  by  night,  displayed  No.  26 
at  one  or  both  ends  of  an  engine,  car  or  train,  indicate 
that  workmen  are  under  or  about  it.  When  thus  pro- 
tected, it  must  not  be  coupled  to  or  moved.  Workmen 
will  display  the  blue  signals,  and  the  same  workmen  are 
alone  authorized  to  remove  them.  Other  cars  must  not 
be  placed  on  the  same  track,  so  as  to  intercept  the  view 
of  the  blue  signals,  without  first  notifying  the  workmen. 

The   engine   bell    must    be    rung    when    an   engine    is  No.  30 
about  to  move. 

The  engine  bell  must  not  be  rung  on  elevated  tracks.  No.  30a 
excepting  when  approaching  and  leaving  stations,  and  in 
switching  movements. 

The    engine   bell   must   be    rung  on   approaching   the  No.  31 
whistling   post   at   every   public   road   crossing   at   grade, 
and   kept  ringing  until   the   crossing   is  passed;   and  the 
whistle   must  be   sounded   at   all   whistling  posts. 

An   inferior   train  must  clear  the   time  of  a  superior  No.  86 
train  in  the  same  direction  at  least  ten  minutes. 

When  trains  meet  by  special  order  or  time-table  reg-  No.  90a 
ulations,    conductors   and    enginemen    must    inform    each 
other  what  train  they  are.     This  must  be  done  by  word 
of  mouth. 

In  case  of  stoppage  between  stations,  the  flagman  must  No.  99 
immediately  go  back  with  not  less  than  two  torpedoes, 
and  a  red  flag  by  day  or  red  and  white  lantern  and  two 
red  fusees  by  night,  and  at  night  place  a  lighted  red 
fusee  in  the  center  of  the  track  500  feet  behind  the  rear 
of  train,  proceeding  by  day  or  night  to  a  point  not  less 

81 


than  three-quarters  of  a  mile  (twenty-four  telegraph 
poles)  distant  from  rear  of  train  until  he  reaches  a 
point  where  the  danger  signal  can  be  seen  not  less  than 
one-quarter  of  a  mile  (eight  telegraph  poles)  by  the 
engineman  of  any  approaching  train.  The  flagman  will 
at  once  place  one  torpedo  on  the  rail  on  engineman's 
side,  and  will  remain  at  such  point  until  the  train  has 
arrived,  or  until  he  is  recalled.  The  engineman  on 
approaching  train,  on  seeing  the  flagman's  signal,  will 
immediately  call  for  brakes,  as  evidence  that  the  signal 
has  been  seen.  When  the  flagman  has  been  recalled  and 
no  approaching  train  has  arrived,  he  will  place  a  second 
torpedo  on  the  rail,  200  feet  nearer  his  train  than  the 
first,  and  return  with  all  possible  dispatch  to  his  train. 
On  exploding  one  torpedo  the  approaching  train  will  be 
brought  to  a  full  stop,  and  thereafter  proceed  with  ex- 
treme caution,  expecting  to  find  some  obstruction  on  the 
track.  When  the  second  torpedo  is  exploded,  the  engine- 
man  will  know  that  the  flagman  has  been  recalled,  and 
will  proceed  cautiously,  keeping  a  sharp  lookout  for  train 
ahead.  Immediately  on  the  sound  of  the  whistle  recalling 
flagman,  if  there  is  not  a  clear  view  to  the  rear  for 
one-quarter  of  a  mile  (eight  telegraph  poles),  the  train 
should  be  moved  ahead  at  a  speed  of  not  less  than  six 
miles  per  hour,  until  a  point  is  reached  where  the  track 
is  straight  for  one-quarter  of  a  mile  in  the  rear  of  train, 
always  bearing  in  mind  that  the  time  of  the  flagman's 
return  is  the  period  of  greatest  risk.  When  the  character 
of  the  road  or  weather  makes  it  necessary,  the  flagman 
shall  go  to  a  greater  distance  with  signals,  so  as  to  insure 
absolute  safety.  It  must  be  distinctly  understood  that  the 
conductor  of  the  train,  or  the  engineman  of  an  engine 
running  light  is  held  responsible  for  the  safety  of  his 
train  or  engine.  When  any  train  has  been  stopped  by  a 
preceding  train  in  the  manner  above  mentioned,  the  con- 
ductor of  the  last  train  must  use  the  same  precautions 
with  regard  to  any  following  trains,  as  those  heretofore 
described.  When  it  is  necessary  to  protect  the  front  of 
a  train   the   same   precaution    shall   be   observed   by   the 

88 


front  brakeman  or  fireman.  Conductors  are  held  respon- 
sible for  the  proper  protection  of  their  trains  under  all 
circumstances. 

When   cars  are   pushed   by  an    engine    (except   when  No.  102 
shifting  and  making  up  train  in  yards)    a  flagman  must 
occupy  a  conspicuous  position  on  the  front  of  the  leading 
car  and  signal  the   engineman   in  case   of  need. 

If  such  signal  cannot  be  seen  by  the  engineman  or 
fireman,  the  engineman  will  bring  the  train  to  a  stop 
immediately  and  not  proceed  until  signal  is  visible. 

When  switching  is  being  done  over  highway  or  street  No.  102a 
railway  crossings  by  yard  or  trainmen,  a  man  must  be 
stationed  at  that  crossing  to  act  as  a  flagman. 

Cars  must  not  be  moved  over  highway  crossings  or  No.  102b 
in  front  of  passenger  stations,  detached  from  engines, 
other  than  at  terminals,  where  express  authority  has  not 
been  given  so  to  do  by  the  division  superintendent.  Cars 
containing  passengers  must  not  be  switched  unless  coupled 
to   the  engine  and  air  brake  in  use. 

In  approaching  a  station  where  a  passenger  train  is  No.  105 
due  or  past  due,  and  where  the  view  is  not  clear,  trains 
must  be  under  perfect  control  so  that  they  may  be  stopped, 
if  necssary,  before  reaching  station.  Trains  on  the  double 
track  must  not,  under  any  circumstances,  pull  into  a  sta- 
tion at  which  a  passenger  train  in  the  opposite  direction 
is  standing  or  into  which  it  is  pulling,  to  receive  or  dis- 
charge passengers,  until  such  train  has  started  up  and 
the  rear  coach  thereof  has  passed  the  end  of  the  station 
platform  nearest  the  approaching  train,  excepting  where 
tracks  are  divided  by  fences.  When  two  trains  are 
nearing  a  station  from  opposite  directions  at  the  same 
time  and  only  one  of  them  is  scheduled  to  stop,  the  train 
making  the  stop  must  reduce  speed  to  let  the  other 
through  the  station  before  it  arrives.  When  two  trains 
going  in  opposite  directions  arrive  at  a  station  and  both 
are  scheduled  to  stop,  the  inferior  train  will  not  pull  up 
to  platform  until  superior  train  has  departed.  At  stations 
on  single  track,  all  trains  will  reduce  to  a  speed  of  four 

83 


miles  per  hour  in  passing  a  point  where  a  passenger  train 
is  receiving  or  discharging  passengers,  and  pass  such 
train  with  the  engine  bell  ringing  constantly. 

No.  106  Passengers  will  not  be  allowed  to  ride  on  freight, 
extra  or  work  extra,  except  upon  such  regular  freight 
trains  as  may  be  designated  in  the  division  time  tables. 
Freight  trains  that  carry  passengers  will  be  particular 
to  have  the  caboose  stop  at  the  depot  platform  to  receive 
and  discharge  them.  Before  the  arrival  of  train  at  any 
station  where  they  stop,  the  conductor  will  distinctly 
call  out  the  name  of  station.  This  rule  applies  to  em- 
ployes of  the  company  not  actually  on  duty,  as  well  as  to 
other  persons.  It  is,  however,  understood  that  persons 
accompanying  live  stock  or  perishable  freight,  shall  be 
allowed  to  ride  on  the  same  trains  therewith,  for  the 
purpose  of  taking  care  of  the  same,  upon  the  presentation 
of  proper  transportation. 

No.  736  Freight,  baggage  and  other  articles  must  not  be  allowed 
to  stand  on  the  depot  platforms  where  they  might  cause 
accident  or  inconvenience  to  passengers  or  employes,  or 
receive  damage  from  the  weather.  U.  S.  mail  pouches 
must  not  be  left  unprotected  upon  the  platforms  or  in 
the  waiting  rooms  and  other  exposed  places  at  stations. 

No.  761  On  leaving  a  station  passenger  brakeman  will  pass 
through  the  train,  from  the  front  to  the  rear,  and  when 
about  one-third  the  length  of  the  car  from  forward  end, 
with  closed  doors,  will  announce  in  a  clear  and  distinct 
voice  the  name  of  the  next  station,  then  proceed  to 
within  the  same  distance  from  the  rear  end  of  the  car, 
and  make  the  same  announcement.  If  the  train  is 
to  stop  for  meals,  the  brakeman  will  so  state,  giving  the 
length  of  time  the  train  will  stop.  Conductors  of  all 
trains  stopping  at  stations  at  which  lunch  counters  or 
eating  houses  are  located  will  announce  in  the  lunch  or 
dining  room  notice  of  departure  of  the  train  in  ample 
time  to  allow  passengers  to  get  aboard  before  it  starts. 
Upon  approaching  a  station  located  at  or  in  the  vicinity 
of  a  railroad  crossing,  when  it  is  necessary  for  a  train 

S4 


to  stop  at  such  crossing,  before  reaching  the  crossing 
brakemen  must  give  warning  of  the  fact  by  calling  out 
distinctly  in  each  car  "the  next  stop  is  for  railway  cross- 
ing, not  a  station,"  junction  points,  railroad  crossings 
where  a  stop  is  made  and  terminals  will  be  announced, 
passengers  notified  when  to  change  cars  and  attention 
directed  to  their  parcels  and  other  belongings. 

They  must  collect  the  proper  fare  from  every  passen-  No.  767 
ger  not  provided  with  a  ticket  or  pass  in  proper  form. 
In  all  cases,  on  refusal  of  any  passenger  to  produce  a 
proper  ticket  or  pass,  or  to  pay  the  fare,  the  conductor 
shall  cause  the  train  to  be  brought  to  a  full  stop  at  a 
regular  open  station,  and  shall  require  such  person  to 
leave  the  train  and,  on  refusal,  shall  remove  him  or  her 
therefrom  and  must  procure  and  report  the  names  and 
addresses  of  persons  who  were  present  and  witnessed  the 
controversy.  Each  conductor  will  be  held  responsible  for 
the  exercise  of  a  reasonable  discretion  in  the  perform- 
ance of  this  duty,  being  careful  that  no  unnecessary  force 
is  used,  that  the  Company  may  not  be  subjected  to  un- 
necessary litigation  or  annoyance.  They  must  not  eject 
women  or  children  of  tender  years;  and  any  person 
unattended  in  such  a  condition  of  body  or  mind  as  to  be 
incapable  of  caring  for  himself  must  be  placed  in  the 
custody  of  the  nearest  station  agent  who  will  wire  the 
Superintendent  for  instructions  regarding  such  person's 
final  disposition.  In  removing  a  person  from  the  train, 
the  conductor  must  use  extreme  care  to  avoid  controversy 
and  not  indulge  in  abusive  language  or  in  any  manner 
insult  or  maltreat  the  person  to  be  removed;  or  use 
unnecessary  force  in  so  doing,  unless  in  a  clear  case  of 
self  defense,  when  an  assault  is  made  upon  the  conductor 
or  his  men;  and  then  the  infliction  of  unnecessary  injury 
must  be  carefully  avoided.  A  sufficient  force  must  be 
brought  into  requisition  to  overcome  resistance  and  to 
place  the  person  on  the  ground  without  inflicting  injury, 
the  law  being  that  conductors  may  command  employes  or 
any  of  the  passengers  to  assist  in  such  removal.  In  all 
cases  except  where  passengers  shall  be  ejected  for  refusal 


to  produce  proper  ticket  or  pass,  or  to  pay  the  proper 
fare,  the  conductor,  before  so  doing,  must  tender  such 
passenger  such  proportion  of  the  fare  he  has  paid  as  the 
distance  he  then  is  from  the  place  to  which  he  has  paid 
his  fare  bears  to  the  whole  distance  for  which  he  has 
paid  his  fare.  In  case  of  such  ejectment  a  report  (on 
form  No.  992)  must  be  sent  to  the  Superintendent  by  first 
mail  with  full  particulars. 

No.  769  Passenger  trainmen  will  be  required  to  securely  close 
vestibule  doors  and  platform  traps  of  all  passenger  cars 
when  in  motion;  and  after  departure  from  a  station  will 
observe  whether  or  not  there  are  any  passengers  clinging 
to  the  hand-rails  of  the  vestibules. 

No.  809  While  at  stations  conductors  will  do  such  switching 
as  may  be  required  by  the  station  agent.  Trainmen  or 
switchmen  must  not  move  cars  that  are  being  loaded  or 
unloaded  on  side  tracks  without  notifying  all  parties  doing 
such  work.  They  must  not  obstruct  street  or  public  road 
crossings  with  their  trains,  and  be  particular,  when  at 
junction  stations,  that  no  part  of  their  train  is  allowed 
to  stand  on  railway  crossings  or  interlocking  systems. 

No  812  Conductors  leaving  cars  on  side  tracks  will  see  that 
they  are  properly  secured  and  sufficiently  clear  of  the 
main  line.  In  leaving  loaded  cars  at  any  station  they  will 
place  them  most  conveniently  for  unloading.  The  cars 
must  be  so  placed  as  not  to  project  over  line  of  highway 
crossings.  If  a  car  be  set  out  without  a  brake,  conductors 
must  securely  block  the  wheels.  Cutting  off  engine  and 
cars  before  a  train  has  stopped  and  allowing  the  balance 
of  train  to  follow,  is  prohibited. 

No.  834  No  one  will  be  allowed  to  ride  on  the  engine  without 
permission  from  the  Superintendent  or  Master  Mechanic, 
excepting  divisional  officers,  foremen  of  bridge  and  road 
repairers,  on  their  own  sections,  or  the  conductor  and 
brakemen  of  the  train. 

No.  854a  All  employes,  including  trainmen,  enginemen  and 
switchmen    are   prohibited    from    going   between    cars   or 


between   any   car   and  engine  while   in   motion,    for  any 
purpose  whatsoever. 

No  person  will  be  allowed  to  ride  upon  the  pilot  of  a   No.  855 
locomotive,  either  in  the  discharge  of  duty  or  otherwise. 

Turn-tables    must   be    locked    with    a    switch-lock,    by  No.  857 
enginemen  and  others  immediately  after  use,  except  when 
in  charge  of  employes      When  turn-tables  are  found  un- 
locked, and  when  tables  or  locks  are  out  of  order,  report 
at  once  to  the  Superintendent  by  wire. 

The  doors  of  freight  cars  must  be  kept  closed  when  No.  862 
not  in  use.     Train  and  station  employes  will  enforce  this 
rule. 

Whenever  passengers  or  employes  are  injured,  see  that  No.  910 
everything  is  done  to  care  for  them  properly,  calling  the 
Company's  nearest  surgeon  to  treat  them,  or,  if  prudent, 
move  to  the  nearest  place  at  which  the  Company  has  a 
surgeon,  and  leave  them  with  such  surgeon  for  care  and 
treatment.  If  the  injury  he  serious,  call  the  nearest  com- 
petent surgeon  obtainable  to  attend  until  the  Company's 
surgeon  arrives. 

Whenever  an  accident  happens  to  any  train  on  which  No.  911 
passengers  are  carried,  whether  collision  or  derailment,  of 
whatever  nature,  on  main  line  or  siding,  or  within  the  yard 
limits  where  trains  are  reconstructed,  conductors  must 
take  down  on  Form  No.  loio  the  name  and  address  of 
every  passenger  on  the  train,  and  ascertain  from  the  pas- 
senger, and  note  opposite  his  or  her  name,  what  injury,  if 
any,  they  received.  In  such  cases,  conductors,  after  first 
making  everything  safe,  must  give  their  undivided  atten- 
tion to  the  care  and  comfort  of  their  passengers,  especially 
to  those  who  are  injured.  Bedding  and  linen  may  be  taken 
from  the  sleepers  for  this  purpose,  the  conductor  keeping 
a  careful  account  of  all  material  so  taken,  and  its  return 
or  safe  keeping  attended  to;  and,  when  deemed  necessary, 
injured  persons  may  be  put  in  the  sleepers.  When  a  num- 
ber of  persons  are  injured  the  service  of  competent  sur- 
geons in  the  vicinity  should  be  at  once  secured,  and  every 
possible  effort  made  to  care  for  the  injured,  the  Company's 

87 


surgeon  in  each  direction  being  notified  by  wire  to  come 
immediately  to  the  place  of  the  accident. 

No.  912  When  persons  (other  than  employes)  by  reason  of 
climbing  on  or  jumping  from  moving  trains,  or  walking 
or  lying  on  the  track,  are  injured,  they  should  be  sent  to 
their  homes  or  placed  in  charge  of  the  local  city,  village  or 
township  authorities  and  no  expense  incurred  on  the  part 
of  the  Company  in  the  matter. 

No.  913  A  report  of  all  accidents  must  be  telegraphed  immedi- 
ately to  the  Superintendent  or  his  assistant  by  the  con- 
ductor, engineman,  agent,  yardmaster,  foreman  or  person 
in  charge,  by  wire,  using  Form  1004,  giving  the  names  of 
the  injured  persons  and  witnesses,  the  extent  of  injuries 
and  the  names  of  the  owners  of  the  property  damgaed  and 
the  extent  of  damage,  and  as  soon  as  possible  a  full  and 
detailed  report  made  on  Form  No.  148  and  forwarded  to 
the  Superintendent  or  his  assistant,  a  separate  report  being 
made  for  each  person  injured.  If  the  person  injured  is  an 
employe  he  should  also  make  and  sign  a  statement  of  facts 
in  relation  to  the  accident  in  his  own  handwriting  on  the 
same  form;  should  he  be  unable  to  write,  the  statement 
should  be  written  at  his  dictation,  and  after  being  read 
over  to  him,  he  should  sign  it  by  making  his  mark,  the 
person  writing  and  reading  statement  signing  same  as  a 
witness. 

No.  914  Whenever  an  employe,  whether  on  duty  or  not,  wit- 
nesses an  accident  in  which  a  person  is  injured  or  property 
damaged,  in  which  the  Company  is  in  any  way  concerned, 
he  must  report  it  immediately  on  Form  148.  Every  effort 
must  be  made  to  procure  the  name  and  addresses  of  all 
persons,  particularly  outsiders,  who  witnessed  the  accident, 
especially  when  persons  are  injured  within  the  corporate 
limits  of  any  city,  town  or  village,  or  when  crossing  the 
tracks  at  a  public  highway. 

No.  915  When  an  accident  occurs  on  an  engine,  or  is  caused  by 
an  engine  striking  any  person,  or  conveyance,  or  when  cars 
are   being  coupled   or   uncoupled,   a    full   report   must  be 


made  by  the  engineman  on  Form  148,  as  well  as  by  the 
conductor  or  the  person  in  charge  of  the  train. 

When  persons  are  injured  while  coupling  or  uncoupling  No.  9l« 
cars  or  in  getting  on  or  off  cars,  whether  passenger  or 
freight,  or  in  any  other  way,  in*  which  the  accident  may 
have  been  caused  by  defective  appliances  or  machinery, 
the  cars  or  appliances  must  be  immediately  examined  by 
the  person  in  charge  or  by  the  agent,  to  ascertain  their 
condition,  and  report  made  of  the  inspection  on  Form  751, 
giving  the  numbers  and  initials  of  cars  examined  and  the 
names  of  the  persons  making  the  inspection.  The  Superin- 
tendent or  his  assistant  will  then  notify  the  inspector  at  the 
first  division  terminal,  who  will  also  examine  the  ma- 
chinery, cars  or  appliances,  and  make  report  on  same  form. 
When  an  accident  is  caused  by  defective  machinery  or  by 
the  breaking  of  machinery,  tools,  appliances  or  rails,  the 
broken  or  defective  parts  must  be  so  marked  as  to  be 
readily  identified  and  immediately  turned  over  to  the 
Superintendent  or  his  assistant  and  by  him  forwarded  to 
the  General  Claim  Agent. 

When  an  accident  occurs  which  results  in  the  death  of  No  917 
any  person,  the  remains  of  the  deceased  must  be  immedi- 
ately picked  up  and  carefully  conveyed  to  the  nearest  sta- 
tion building,  care  being  taken  not  to  remove  the  body  out- 
side the  limits  of  county  and  state  in  which  the  accident 
happened.  The  agent  at  such  station  will  then  notify  the 
Superintendent  by  wire,  as  well  as  the  family  or  friends 
of  the  deceased. 

They  must  permit  their  hand  cars  to  be  used  only  in  No.  1013 
the  service  of  the  company,  and  no  one  will  be  allowed  to 
ride  on  these  cars  except  employes  in  the  performance  of 
duty,  unless  provided  with  a  written  order  from  the 
proper  authority.  When  two  or  more  hand  cars  are  fol- 
lowing each  other  they  will  keep  at  least  300  feet  apart 
Hand  or  velocipede  cars,  belonging  to  private  parties, 
will  not  be  allowed  on  the  track  except  by  order  of  the 
Superintendent. 


No.  lOU  When  obliged  to  run  hand  and  velocipede  cars  after 
dark,  two  red  lanterns  must  be  so  displayed  on  the  car 
as  to  be  visible  to  trains  in  both  directions. 

No  1016  No  wood,  ties,  or  property  of  any  description  must  be 
piled  within  six  feet  of  the  main  or  side  track,  or  else- 
where, in  such  manner  as  to  obstruct  the  view  of,  or 
from,  approaching  trains.  Old  ties,  fencing  and  similar 
property,  also  links,  pins,  drawbars,  spikes  and  all  other 
material  and  iron  work  that  is  found  on  the  section  must 
be  picked  up  at  once,  piled  neatly,  or  disposed  of  as 
directed  by  the  roadmaster.  Rails  and  other  material 
must  NOT  be  left  scattered  about  station  grounds. 

No.  1025  ALL  EMPLOYES  OF  MAINTENANCE  OR 
TRANSPORTATION  DEPARTMENT  WILL  GIVE 
SPECIAL  ATTENTION  TO  THE  ABOVE  ORDERS. 
TAKE  NO  RISKS.  REMEMBER  THAT  IT  IS 
BETTER  TO  BE  DELAYED  BY  ADOPTING  A  SAFE 
COURSE  THAN  TO  HAVE  A  TRAIN  MEET  WITH 
AN  ACCIDENT  BY  NEGLECTING  TO  TAKE  ALL 
THE  PRECAUTIONS   POSSIBLE. 


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